


Wait by the River

by gr__ngrass



Series: Marked [1]
Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-13
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-06-10 01:23:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 45,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15280488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gr__ngrass/pseuds/gr__ngrass
Summary: Villanelle has to deal with the consequences of underestimating Eve and Eve has to deal with her darker tendencies





	1. Where?

“You can’t.”

“I can!”

A sharp pain, confusion, shock, betrayal, and then rage.

Villanelle topples off the bed onto the floor grabbing for the gun she put down during her moment of weakness. With one hand covering her wound, the other now gripping the gun, she shouts “Hey!” aiming at Eve who pops out from behind the kitchen wall and fires, sending Eve stumbling back into cover. Looking to her right Villanelle spots Eve’s green zebra scarf on the floor nearby. She snatches it off the floor, stuffs it into her stab wound, and staggers out of her flat.

The blood loss is making it hard for her to focus on escaping. She bumps into walls and slips down the steps leaving an obvious trail of blood in her wake. Villanelle trips down the last three steps falling on her face. Rage and longing and despair and then rage at the latter two emotions bubble up and froths over as she pushes herself up with one arm and an anguished grunt as she scrambles into the forecourt.

The sun is shining but the air is cold and sharp with a feel of impending snow. Villanelle, instead, actually feels hot. The warm blood spilling down her left side, adrenaline, and anger at herself shields her from the cold.

In the adjacent alley, behind a large inconspicuous pile of damaged furniture, she pulls a tarp off of her motorcycle she’s hidden for the situation she just now happens to find herself in.

The effort to make it out of her flat has taken its toll. She briefly takes stock of herself. Her breathing is labored and shallow. She’s lightheaded and her wound is still pulsing blood, but it’s not the pain from the wound she’s most concerned about. Pushing that particular thought away, she clumsily mounts her motorcycle but overdoes it and topples into the brick wall. Bracing herself, Villanelle rights the motorcycle and is briefly unsure if she’s going to make it to her secret safe house. She has no choice but to run. Pressing Eve’s scarf firmly into her wound, Villanelle starts the motorcycle and speeds off to a location only known to her.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Eve takes cover behind the kitchen wall with a towel in her hand she intends to use to stop Oksana’s bleeding. She shouts, “I’m coming out!” as she hopes Oksana isn’t going to shoot at her again, but when she rounds the corner all she sees is Madame Tattevin who flatly tells her “She is gone.”

“Where?“ asks Eve, desperation and confusion in her voice.

Madame Tattevin just shrugs and exits Villanelle’s flat to cross the hallway into hers. Once the deer in the headlights moment passes, Eve bolts down the stairs following the trail of blood. In the building's foyer, she skids through the bloody lower body print left behind from Villanelle’s tumble. Collecting herself, Eve runs outside down an alley next to Villanelles building to what she deduces are motorcycle tire tracks.

“She is gone.” Eve thinks unbelievingly. She can’t believe Villanelle is driving a motorcycle. “She’s the fucking terminator! I stab her and she escapes on a motorcycle!” She runs back upstairs, carefully avoiding the blood this time, to ask the older woman where Villanelle could have gone.

Eve spots her carrying a mop and a bucket of soapy water into the stairway to clean Oksana’s blood. “So, um, you’re right. She is gone. I-I think she left on a motorcycle, do you have any idea where she might have gone?”

“I don’t know. I was only paid to watch her when she was here.”

Eve is in shock. She can’t believe what she’s done. She can’t believe the old woman is so calm cleaning up this much blood as if it happens every other week. Eve shuffles back into Villanelle’s flat and collapses on the couch, head in her hands. She runs her fingers through her hair when she remembers she’s got blood on them and immediately removes them. She stares at her crimson hands thinking over everything that just happened.

“You can’t,” Oksana told her and all Eve can remember thinking about is Bill lying on the nightclub floor bleeding out.

“I can,” Eve had replied and all she can remember is the anger and heat, the power and satisfaction of stabbing Villanelle. That was until the regret crashed over her at hearing the small “I really liked you,” and, “It hurts.” The regret at finding out she stabbed Oksana.

Eve gets up and washes the blood from her hands, tears mingling with the water from the faucet. Upset about what she’s done, who she’s done it to, and something else snaking through the back of her mind. She grabs a towel and goes to help the older woman clean the stairwell of Oksana’s blood.

They make quick time of it. Eventually, all the blood on the stairs and Oksana’s apartment is gone after a few hours. With help from Eve, the older woman dumps the bloodied water down the sink and rings out the mop. She sees that Eve still has the damp, and now bloody, towel in her hands. She gestures for Eve to pick up the bloody bed sheets and follow her.

Eve walks over to the sheets and stares at them asVillanelle’s last words to her echo in her head.

“This way!” says Madame Tattevin, jolting Eve’s out of her bloody reveries. Eve angrily throws the towel in the middle of the sheets, bundles them up and trudges after the older woman into Villanelle’s laundry room to wash them.

The physical act of cleaning the stairwell, the flat, and Villanelle’s sheets also washes away Eve’s shock. Her brain starts racing, thinking of all the ways to track down Villanelle. She asks the older woman for all of her notes, so she can make copies. “Does Paris have a Kinkos?” Eve thinks to herself. Paris does, and it’s a couple blocks away.

It takes Eve twice as long to get there because anytime she hears a moped or motorcycle her heart feels like it’s going to jump out of her chest and her stomach churns. She hopes and fears Villanelle is alive but dreads her coming back to exact her revenge. She doesn’t have time to unpack that first thought and continues distractedly onwards to the FedEx. Eve eventually makes her way there and copies all of the older woman’s notes about Villanelle late into the evening.

Back at Villanelle’s flat, Eve starts reading through the surveillance notes as she finishes the laundry and takes a break to make the bed and clean up the mess she made of Oksana’s apartment before she made a mess of Oksana. She hangs up Villanelle’s clothes, sweeps up the broken bottles, and reorganizes her vanity. Cleaning Villanelle’s apartment, Eve finds a stack of postcards from across Europe sent to her by random people and a laptop. Eve has a hunch the postcards aren’t from the people they say they’re from. She also reads for three days straight. Takes meticulous notes. Doesn’t eat, doesn’t sleep, only reads, buying time while she waits for Oksana to come back.

On the third day, after Eve finally finishes scouring Madame’s Tattevin’s notes she feels empty. There’s not much to them. Just the times and dates of Villanelle leaving and returning to her flat and if she had any guests and how long they stayed.

Eve had hoped for some kind of resolution at the end of reading everything. As if reading all the notes on Villanelle’s comings and goings would magically produce Oksana whole and unharmed at the end of all of it. She made a few notes, some questions to ask, leads to follow, but there’s nothing else for her to do in Paris.

“It’s over. She’s not coming back.” she thinks, knowing there’s no point in staying any longer. She can’t wait for Villanelle in Paris forever. Someone somewhere is sure to get suspicious. Even though Carolyn fired her, Eve knows she’ll wonder what happened to her in that Russian airport if she doesn’t return to London soon. Elena or Kenny will ask about her, and eventually, they’ll work out that she booked a flight from Moscow to Paris instead of Moscow to London. So Eve books a ticket for the next plane to London.

Eve organizes her copies and notes into a manila folder she found in Villanelle’s desk she was snooping through during a break from reading. She carefully stuffs the folder, postcards, and laptop into her suitcase. Taking one last look at Villanelle’s flat, something out of the corner of her eye makes her jump. In a relieved doubletake, Eve realizes it’s just her reflection from Villanelle’s vanity. But she does a triple-take, not quite understanding what she’s seeing. It’s her, but she’s different, more. More focused, more feral, more confident, more threatening. It’s a look in her eyes and the way she holds herself. Several thoughts rapidly fire off in Eve’s brain. Pride, wonder, guilt, dread, apprehension among them. She doesn’t want to nor does she have time to think about what she’s seeing in herself. Quickly shaking her head to clear her thoughts, she leaves taking one last look at the flat. Before she goes, Eve stops by Madame Tattevin’s to ask her a few questions and ask her to call if Villanelle comes back. She leaves a note with the older woman to give Oksana for when or even if she ever returns.

 

Arriving in London, Eve hails a cab outside the airport and rattles off her address when the driver asks where she’s headed. Up until that exact moment she hadn’t thought about Niko at all. Annoyance and guilt flood her. “What does it matter?” Eve thinks to herself, “he hasn’t returned any of my calls,” and angrily, “it will be harder for him to ignore me if I tell him I’m back face to face.”

She rehearses possible future conversations with Niko during the cab ride. Some angry, some remorseful, some placative, some exhausting, but most, she finds, are boring. The cab parks outside her house and she pays the fair. Standing outside, taking a second to steel herself, Eve finally notices how frigid and gloomy London currently is. Its overcast and all the buildings look dull in the low sunlight. Sighing she marches to her front door. She knocks. No response. Eve unlocks it and walks into the front hallway calling for Niko. Again, no answer. She checks her phone and realizes it’s a Tuesday around noon, which means Niko is at work. In all the chaos, Eve barely noticed the time and she forgot what day it was.

Eve sets her handbag down on the kitchen table and drags her suitcase upstairs. She has a silent debate with herself about unpacking. Unzipping and re-zipping her suitcase a couple of times before settling on leaving the suitcase unzipped, but still packed. She walks around the house trying to remember the best parts of her and Niko’s marriage but all she can think about is the time Villanelle broke into her house. Eve smiles to herself as she remembers trying to use a toilet brush as a weapon against her. A sense of loss suddenly overwhelms Eve at the thought of microwaving Villanelle a week-old shepherd’s pie. It’s confusing because she’s not quite sure what she’s grieving. There’s still a while before she expects Niko, so she decides to pour herself a glass of wine and skim over her notes to help distract herself from her own bewildering thoughts.

Eventually, Niko’s comes home. Eve is startled by the sound of his key in the lock, but the noise gives her enough warning to run upstairs and hide her notes in her suitcase. She doesn’t want to think about why she needs to hide part of herself from her husband right before she has to attempt to repair her marriage.

Niko has a confused look on his face walking through the entryway glancing back at an unlocked door he swears he locked before he left that morning. His face switches to shock when he sees Eve at the top of the stairs. They both stare at each other in silence for a bit. Eve uncertain of how Niko feels about her returning, unsure of what to say. Niko is silent because he is sincerely surprised to see her.

“You’re back,” he states.

Sheepishly, “Uh, yeah. A couple of hours ago. I tried calling and then texting, but it seemed like your phone was dead.”

“No, I was ignoring you.” He dryly replies, “You remember pushing me. I tried to forgive you. Then you went to Russia. Remember.”

Eve looks away and says, “Sorry for pushing you, truly. I shouldn’t have.”

“And for leaving?”

“Yeah, of course, and for leaving,” Eve adds as an afterthought to placate him.

They stay up early into the next morning talking their way back into their marriage. Both aren’t quite satisfied with where the conversation ends, but Niko has to go to work and Eve needs to look for a new job. She’s a little pissed he was glad she had been fired. In the end, however, both believed they just needed time to work it out together.

It takes Eve a week to find a new job in risk management. It’s not as exciting as tracking an elite assassin bankrolled by a secret organization across Europe, but it’s not boring either. Plus, she has access to a few international databases which she uses in her free time to monitor suspicious deaths.

It also takes a week for Niko to forgive Eve for leaving and for them to sleep in the same bed. They sometimes have late night talks about what happened. Eve is evasive about answering particular questions.

“Why? What could you have been thinking?” an exasperated Niko asks again and again.

“I don’t know. I guess I wasn’t thinking.” is always her answer. Sometimes it's bitter. Sometimes it's tired. Sometimes it's bored. Sometimes it's angry. But it’s always a lie. Eve doesn’t want to nor does she even know where to begin explaining hearing Villanelle’s voice in her head telling her to go to Paris.

Niko senses a change in Eve but never looks close enough to ask the right question. Secretly, Niko is worried about Eve’s answer. Secretly, Eve is worried about her answer too.

Eve tries to make it work for a few weeks. Keeps Villanelle at work and makes time for Niko at home. She tries to go back to how it was before Villanelle, really tries to go back to how she was before. But there are cracks in the façade.

A few months pass before Niko wakes up late at night to see Eve hunched over her laptop, so focused she hadn’t heard him come downstairs. He asks, “Are you coming to bed?”

She closes a tab about a Finnish businessman’s sudden death. “Yeah, just had to finish some work stuff.” Niko suspects it’s not ‘work stuff’.

Eve’s habit of late night research only gets worse as time goes on. Niko will sometimes catch her three or four times a week late at night cross-referencing dates Villanelle was away from her Paris flat and the kills that she had suspected were Villanelle’s. Niko asks, “Work?”, whenever he catches her.

“Yeah, work.”

He starts to notice other changes in Eve. Sometimes he has to bring her back to the present in conversations as, Niko has noticed, she tends to drift off in the middle of them completely preoccupied with some other thought. And they still haven’t been intimate with each other even though he moved back into the bedroom a week after Eve returned. Worst of all, Niko had found a loaded gun in the house. Eve at least had the wherewithal to be apologetic about not telling him when he confronted her. She had told him she needed it for work, at which point Niko knew she was lying about what ‘work’ actually was.

It had been a week after the gun discovery, confrontation, and subsequent arguments and a little over three months since they decided to try to make their marriage work when they mutually decided to end it. It took less than a week for Eve to find an apartment, move out, and sign the divorce papers. She was officially Eve Park again.

A couple of weeks after the divorce, Eve was at her desk eating a turkey and lettuce sandwich (Niko was the cook) focused on an article about a Latvian shipping company’s CEO when her phone buzzed with an unknown number.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

3 MONTHS EARLIER

Villanelle’s safe house (more like cabin) sits isolated in woods fifteen miles west of Paris. When she finally arrives, Villanelle roughly cuts the motorcycle’s engine and lets it crash on its side as she hastily dismounts. Much like Villanelle, the safe house/cabin is deceiving. From the outside, it looks like a modest hunting cabin, but when Villanelle biometrically opens the door there is a fully stocked armory directly in front of her, a surveillance system to her right, and a kitchen to the left that doubles as a medical station.

She labors over to the small refrigerator, prying the door open to grab a blood bag. Standing up, she almost passes out. She knows she needs to hurry or she’s dead. She drags the IV stand from the corner and hooks the blood bag through it. Using the stand as a makeshift walker, she opens a drawer and pulls out a needle, tubing, and the rest of the equipment for the blood transfusion. After assembling everything, she collapses into a chair nearby and hooks herself up to the blood bag. The pain from inserting the needle reminded her of something, but before she could put her finger on it, Villanelle passes out.

 

“I just want to know everything.” Soft eyes then sharp hands and a gleeful “I got you!” jolt Villanelle awake. The blood bag is empty. She’s not as light-headed, but she is thirsty. The suddenness of everything makes her forget exactly what happened, but she looks down at Eve’s green scarf partially inside her and instantly remembers.

“Aahhhh!” she screams furiously ripping out Eve’s scarf, which she immediately regrets because her wound starts bleeding again.

Almost an hour after foolishly reopening her wound, Villanelle, with some effort, examines it. It doesn’t appear to have punctured any organs or sliced any arteries. She can’t believe her luck. Eve hadn’t punctured her stomach or colon. Another thirty minutes later she’s stitched up and connected herself to another one of her stockpiled blood bags. This time though she wills her body to stay awake. Doesn’t want to relieve something she almost didn’t live through.

Sitting in the chair waiting for the blood transfusion to finish, she has nothing to do but stew in her own thoughts. What she finds is that she’s pissed. Everything Eve said to her she had fantasized about for months. It’s everything she wanted from Eve. She allowed herself to be seduced and tricked. And in one shocking moment, one shocking moment of stupidity and weakness, she was beat. Villanelle realized she had revealed too much, given Eve too much and Eve had cleverly used it against her. Eve had seen through her taunts, clothes and shoes and perfume, and seen it for was it really was, want and desire. And Eve had used it against her.

“Clever girl.” She remarks out loud as the realization hits her.

Almost four hours later and the second blood transfusion is done and Villanelle feels better. Sturdier and clearheaded. Still thirsty, she pours herself a glass of water and downs it all, then pours herself another and sips. Her stomach grumbles so she heats up a can of beans over a hot plate. Leaning against the kitchen counter, waiting for the beans to heat, Villanelle looks across the cabin to her surveillance system and notices Eve in her flat.

“Pffft!” Villanelle scoffs and rolls her eyes. “She’s obsessed with me.”

A small smile forms on Oksana’s face, but it’s gone as quickly as it appeared as Villanelle walks over to the monitor for a better look. She sees Eve flipping through papers, occasionally making notes. Villanelle eats her beans watching Eve in her flat. Not exactly what she meant when she said she wanted someone to watch movies with.

Finished with the beans and eating from a can of spam, Villanelle notices Eve look up from the papers towards her front door. Villanelle follows her across multiple monitors, glancing at the feed of her flat’s front door to see if anyone is there. No one.

“Where is she going?”

Then she sees Eve walk out of her laundry room carrying her sheets. She watches curiously as Eve makes her bed unsure of what to make of Eve’s behavior.

“She stabs me then cleans my sheets and makes my bed. She must be obsessed with me.” She watches for another couple of hours before she passes out in front of the monitors, waking up several hours later to Eve still reading through papers.

Villanelle cleans her wound and takes antibiotics and eats her canned food all the while watching Eve sit in her flat reading papers. She’s not quite sure what the papers are to Eve, but she can tell Eve is obsessed with them. The only times she sees Eve take a break is to use the bathroom or, surprisingly, clean the mess Eve had made in her flat.

 

Three days after stumbling into her safe house she sees Eve pack up her suitcase and leave her apartment. Villanelle incidentally decides it’s time to leave too. She packs a bag with two handguns, four magazines, two boxes of ammo, a combat knife, a lock picking set, $50,000, four different passports, two wigs, a set of colored contact lens, antibiotics, a sewing kit, and Eve’s bloody scarf.

Snow is falling as she walks outside. Righting her motorcycle and pointing it down the gravel driveway she speeds away with a semi-solid plan for contacting her employers.


	2. I uh-I mean-I have a job

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Villanelle recovers while waiting for a new job and Eve get two new jobs

Sun shining through a fourth story window, sheer white drapes fluttering gently in an open window, and sheets stir as a pale leg slips out from underneath. Villanelle wakes up early in her rented flat in Barcelona. Stretching, she can feel the tight new skin of her scar straining. She makes a face at the sensation. Walking naked out of her bedroom, she grabs a patterned silk robe hanging on the door and sits in front of her vanity. She takes a long look, noticing how well her face has healed after being hit with a log. “Still beautiful,” she sighs dramatically.

Initially, renting a flat had been a bit tricky. She had arrived early in the morning before the sun was even up, and it was dark enough to dump her bike in el Llobregat river without attracting any unwanted attention. It was, however, too early to look for an apartment so she slept on a park bench until midmorning.

The first landlord slammed the door on her after he took one look at her battered face, bloody body, and vagabond look. The second landlord, a woman, had at least let Villanelle explain she would pay for a year up front in cash, which was all her new landlady needed to hear. It had cost her half of the $50,000 she brought with her but she wasn’t worried. Her cover in Paris was a money market trader. Villanelle knew she could grow her finances exponentially. In fact, she had recently bought another Audi Roadster and BMW G650Xmoto.

She leans back in the chair and pushes the robe aside to inspect Eve’s handiwork. The original stitches had ripped on the drive to Barcelona so she had to re-stitch. Even so, the wound had healed rather nicely leaving behind a shiny and slightly pink scar. Rarely does she actually touch it, her fingers dancing around its periphery. Too many thoughts and too many feelings get dragged up when she does.

Spring in Barcelona is pleasant. Exactly what she wanted for her recovery. The day is supposed to be sunny and in the mid-twenties. Villanelle dresses and goes to her mixed martial arts class. Unlike in Paris, Villanelle rotates through the several gyms Barcelona has to offer in an attempt to reduce her chances of being recognized. She alternates at random to push the odds of identification even lower. After the gym, she goes for a quick run through the city center before finishing at her shooting club.

Joining the shooting club had been a calculated risk. Applying to the club required a comprehensive background check of her current identity, Sloane Weber, meaning the identity would effectively be burned. The other complication of joining the shooting club was her employers, the Twelve, whoever they were, created the identity. The background check would notify them she was in Barcelona and she was uncertain how they would react to her going dark. Would they send a cleaning team after her? Capture and question her about why she left and then dispose of her? Give her a new job? Villanelle couldn’t be sure, but after Eve she felt the risk was worth it to be at the top of her game. Plus, if they did come and didn’t kill her in her sleep, she could say burning the identity was part of her plan for them to find her.

And Villanelle did want them to find her. She liked her job. They had chosen her to carry out their plan and she liked being chosen. It made her feel important. Validated her belief in her own power. Moving across Europe and maybe even to North America might have been the smarter and safer option, but she stayed in Barcelona hoping they would choose her again. She was also hoping that staying still would help convince them she wasn’t trying to run and doublecross them.

Without a handler (she killed the last two) or a Twelve issued laptop and phone, all the obvious routes for contacting Villanelle are gone. So, she waits by the radio listening for her callsign, 2-5-9-7-9. It’s currently her only way to be contacted by her employers.

But she had joined the shooting club almost two and a half months ago and the Twelve still hadn’t contacted her, even though the radio. Villanelle was getting impatient. Some days she thinks it might be worth it for them to come and kill her in her sleep. Put her out of her misery. The past few months had been torturously boring.

Barcelona is fine, but that’s it. Just fine. It’s not Paris. But Villanelle can’t be in Paris (or London for that matter). She needed to get away from her Parisian flat and everything that happened there. She didn’t need the constant reminder of her weakness. So, she’s stuck in Barcelona waiting for salvation or death.

Maybe at this point death is salvation. She feels this acutely late at night as her thoughts drift to her final moments with Eve in Paris. Initially, Villanelle had been quite mad. Mostly at herself. A little at Eve for not submitting to her. In retrospect, however, she was more frustrated at Eve than mad for ruining whatever was going on between them. Now though, her feelings towards Eve are more complicated.

But she doesn’t want to think about Eve as her salvation and possibly her death. So, in between training, running, and shooting, Villanelle mindlessly drifts back to her old habit of skimming the internet late at night to distract herself from thoughts of Eve. When that doesn’t work, she goes on the prowl to try to feel anything other than wanting Eve.

Since coming to Barcelona, Villanelle had many conquests. Most of them raven-haired women or the occasional American. Every once in a while one of them will notice her shiny new scar, almost as if drawn to it. They ask what happened and Villanelle lies.

“I got clipped by a bike.”

“A mugging.”

“My friend’s cat.”

She never lets anyone touch their scar. The sex is pleasure-less. Even before Eve, the pleasure and satisfaction she gained from sex had less to do with an orgasm and more to do with watching someone concede control to her. Waiting and watching for that moment in their eyes when they transferred their power to her was what she got off to. But even then, it was never quite as pleasurable as watching the spark drain from someone’s eyes as she killed them. She preferred close quarter kills so she could see the shock or the fear or the pain or the anger flicker in her victims’ eyes before she dealt the final blow and ultimately watch their soul sink into them. Before Eve, sex was enough to sate Villanelle’s rapacious appetite during the periods between kills. It also helped that she knew another job was always around the corner. But now Eve has ruined her. The sex she’s having is tedious, but she can’t stop trying, always after the high even though she knows nothing will compare.

She resists thinking about Eve but late at night, lying in bed, her resistance is paper-thin. Eve comes to her no matter what mental walls she thinks she built during the day. Eve comes to her confessing, “I think about you all the time” and Oksana slips her hand lower. Her heart rate and fingers quicken as she replays, “I think about your mouth and your eyes.” And she pictures Eve laying across from her, remembers how her hair and skin felt, remembers the defiant look in her eyes, and the surprise and pain. Oksana comes pressing on the still sensitive scar Eve gave her. Oksana comes remembering Eve straddling her with her hand on the knife still inside her. Intense and hot, dopamine and heat flooding her. Her breath shallow and quick, toes curling, and legs shaking. She feels like she’s been set on fire. Phantom pain in her abdomen and chest.

She usually has trouble sleeping after indulging in this weakness of hers so she runs at night. Her late-night runs are more restorative than any of the bacchanalian activities she’s indulged in over the past three months. More restorative than the meaningless sex. More restorative than her shopping sprees and indulgent lifestyle. Villanelle even tried an S&M club but found it too tightly regulated. There was really no power to be gained over another person if she had to sign a safety contract with them. She couldn’t understand the point a safe word. However, none of them compared to the sense of control and power and importance gained late at night running through Barcelona’s streets. She almost never sees another person out on her runs and it makes her feel like she owns the city. Like an apex predator roaming for a kill. Like her old self.

The three months of waiting also gave Villanelle time to think of a cover story for why she suddenly left Paris. She decides to tell them seeing Anna kill herself was difficult. And as Anna had always loved and had wanted to move to Paris, this had initially inspired her to set up her base there. Now, after witnessing Anna commit suicide, Villanelle could no longer live in the city Anna loved after seeing her violent end. Villanelle knows this will give her employers second thoughts about deploying her, but it’s better than telling them about Eve and what Eve had done to her. She will be apologetic about leaving her work phone and laptop and will point out that she responded promptly to the radio signal. She expects them to make her go for a psych evaluation where she will manipulate the tester into believing she felt all of those things at the time, and because of her decision to move to Spain, she has recovered her mental faculties and is ready for fieldwork.

 

Then one warm rainy afternoon, she hears it. A Russian lullaby she finds familiar but can’t quite remember followed by her callsign and direct instructions to report to an airfield one hour south of Paris. She books a private flight, packs a small bag with only the essentials, and is out the door twenty minutes later.

Two hours later her plane touches down in the airfield she was directed to report to. In the air, she thought about the different scenarios that could play out. Spying out of the window, she doesn’t see a squadron of armed men or an unidentifiable black van.

Disembarking from the jet with only a black tactical backpack, she looks across to see the only other jet on the airstrip 50 meters away.

“They might be waiting to ambush me once I board the jet,” she muses as adrenaline starts to slip into her bloodstream. “Only one way to find out.”

Villanelle’s pulse quickens and she’s nervous as she walks across the runway toward the other jet. If anyone on the waiting jet were watching her they would only see a confident and composed young woman walking towards them.

No one is waiting for her, but someone, at least the pilot, knows she’s on board because ten minutes after she boards, the jet is in the air heading to a destination unknown to Villanelle. Another two hours and the jet lands in a private airfield outside of Rome.

It’s in this Roman airfield that she finally comes face to face with a man leaning against a black Aston Martin DBS Superleggera. He’s tall, almost six-foot, bald, blonde beard, vaguely Nordic looking, and rail thin with a cruel sneer on his face as if he knows exactly how much trouble waits for Villanelle wherever he’s going to take her.

Villanelle stops a yard from him and doesn’t say anything. In her experience, the person picking you up for an assignment usually doesn’t know what’s going on, so she waits for him to say something first. He looks her up and down and notes the cold distant look in her eyes. Flicking the cigarette he had been smoking past her right shoulder, missing her by inches (Villanelle doesn’t flinch), he barks, “Get in.”

Not even five minutes on the ground and she’s already fighting the urge to use the gun she packed in her backpack to shoot him in the head.

He gets in the car without another look at or word to her. Villanelle makes an annoyed face and lets out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. She takes one last look around briefly thinking about how she ended up here and almost begins to question whether it’s worth it, but he honks the horn dragging her out of her thoughts. God, she wants to kill him.

The conversation between them during the drive is lacking to say the least. Villanelle pointily stares out the window. One, to ignore his sidelong smirk. Two, to think about where this drive could possibly end and what sort of trouble it’s going to bring her. But before Villanelle can think of anything, the drive is over quicker than she would have liked. She only had enough time to form a flimsy plan that was more winging it than an actual plan as they pull up outside a small winery.

She gets out with her bag, but he points a gun at her and tells her to leave it.

“Ah! So the fun has finally stated,” she thinks. If anything, it’s a relief. Trying to plan for every scenario was exhausting. At least now she could better gauge how to navigate whatever situation was going to present itself to her.

“Let’s go,” he says in her general direction, already walking away from her towards the smallest of three nearby buildings. He’d only spoken six words to her, Villanelle really wishes she had her gun just to shut him up. Six words were six too many in her opinion.

Once inside, the building smelled like vinegar and dirt and appeared to be a large storage shed for tools and broken wine casks. She couldn’t help but notice all the sharp shears of different sizes or the pitchforks and shovels. “A winery would be a convenient place to dispose of a body,” she notes sardonically to herself.

At a makeshift table in the center, another man is sitting, waiting for her. Villanelle had stopped walking once she saw him. The tall skinny man whose name she still doesn’t know points the gun at her and then the chair opposite from the man already seated at the table and orders her to sit. Villanelle has to fight her initial urge to refuse and roughly walks over to sit across from the second man. She glances behind her to see Skinny leaning against a beam cleaning his nails, the guns still in his hand, looking bored with the whole situation. Turning to look at the man at the table, Villanelle raises an eyebrow as if saying, “So, why am I here?”

He doesn’t immediately speak, giving Villanelle time to size him up in case this goes south. He looks like a Viking and the more she looks the more she comes to realize any type of physical confrontation is not going to go the way she would like. Maybe she could move fast enough to disable and disarm Skinny, but most likely the seated man, who, she’s realized is also built like a Viking, would just pick up the table and smash her with it. “You were sent a job three months ago and never responded,” he states. “Our employers were worried.”

“I was-,” she begins to explain.

“Ah! I am talking!” he shouts at her. “Do not interrupt!”

Villanelle is pissed but stays quiet, albeit with an annoyed expression on her face, as she needs him to believe her story about going dark.

Continuing, “You were sent a job three months ago and never responded. Our employers were worried. They believed you had betrayed them. Then two months ago Sloane Weber is getting a background check to join a shooting club in Barcelona. This is curious as Sloane Weber doesn’t actually exist,” his voice starting to rise, “and if she were to exist she should be in Paris answering her FUCKING emails!”

He pauses waiting for Villanelle to interrupt, but she’s not going to make that mistake twice. Composing himself he asks, “So what we would like to know is why are you now Sloane Weber and what the fuck are you doing?”

“Anger issues,” she thinks before answering, “I was in mourning.”

He’s speechless, obviously not expecting that answer and she doesn’t need to turn around to know that Skinny is shocked too because the noise from chewing on his fingernails is blessedly gone.

“Mourning?” he asks suspiciously.

“Yes. I don’t know if you know this, but the woman I used to make love to killed herself in front of me three months ago. I could not endure being in the city she loved.” He looks more shocked than suspicious as Villanelle continues. “I had picked Paris as my base of operations because my dear Anna had always wanted to live there. It was the closest I could come to living with her while she was living with the belief I was dead. Her suicide was extremely difficult for me.” Her voice cracks on this last line and she wipes away a non-existent tear.

“Right, you picked Paris,” he says. Villanelle believes he is starting to believe her story.

“I needed to leave. Go someplace new. I wanted to practice my Spanish and I felt the warmer weather would be good for me. Barcelona seemed like the perfect place. I used the Sloane Weber identity to alert our employers to where I was, hoping they would reach out. I also checked for my callsign every hour, which you can see, I responded to promptly. I have nothing to hide. I only needed time to become mentally well again. Mental health is very important for assassins,” she finishes sagely.

He narrows his eyes at her as if trying to see the untruths in her story. He then glances at Skinny behind her and they share a look. Villanelle tries to read Vik’s face (she’s decided to call him Vik, short for Viking) to determine whether he believes what she told him, but whatever looks he shares with Skinny is unreadable to her.

“An interrogation team was sent to your flat in Paris.”

Villanelle keeps her face neutral despite her brief panic the team ran into Eve, but she quickly remembers watching Eve leave her flat unharmed.

“They interviewed,” he checks his notes in front of him, “a Madame Tattevin. She says you left a bloody mess. Both yourself and your flat.”

Despite her surprise at questioning her neighbor, Villanelle answers without a beat, “As I said, losing Anna was very hard for me. I may have tried to kill myself, which is why I needed time to recover in Barcelona. To get my head on straight.”

“You were so sad about your, as you say, lover’s death you tried to kill yourself?” He takes a minute to look at his notes. Shares another look with Skinny. “What about Konstantin? Did that have anything to do with your sudden desire to die?”

Villanelle is openly shocked now. She had not expected Konstantin to come up during this interrogation. “I killed him. It was my job to kill him. I was happy to. He betrayed me.”

Vik eyes her, trying to see through whatever web she is spinning. Except Villanelle isn’t exactly lying this time. She had killed him. Hadn’t she?

“Is that what this is all about?” she thinks. “They think I ran because I was upset I killed Konstantin?”

“Listen,” she pretends to speak plainly now hoping this will persuade them. “I ran. I did. But because I was sad over losing someone I thought could or might have loved me. In a moment of weakness I hurt myself. I realized I needed to refocus on what was important, my job. So I left a flat and a city I found distracting. That is all. I want to work. I love my work. I would never do anything to jeopardize that.”

Vik looks to Skinny then back to her and says, “OK.”

Skinny comes to sit at the table now, laying the gun in the center. All together now, in the center of the smelly tool shed, they begin discussing Villanelle’s new job. Unluckily and frustratingly for her, Skinny is now her new partner for the foreseeable future until the Twelve can fully trust her again.

Their target is someone in the intelligence field located in London. A cold sweat coats Villanelle’s body until Vik mentions it’s a man the two of them need to eliminate. They share only vague details with her. Only letting her know the man is in London located in an abandoned building in a district of abandoned buildings. Much to her disapproval, Vik and Skinny will give her the details on a need to know basis right before the job is to be completed in two weeks’ time. Though they do give her a new encrypted phone and a new encrypted laptop with explicit instructions to keep the phone on her at all times.

Once the interrogation/meeting is finished, Skinny drives her back to the airfield to catch another jet back to Barcelona. All three agreed she should stay in Barcelona as Sloane Weber. Why waste another identity moving to another city.

On the tarmac, Skinny doesn’t say goodbye but instead says, “Good story back there. The fake tear was a deft touch,” closely watching for any reaction from her.

Villanelle schools herself with a look of disgust and shock and in fake outrage says, “You’re vile!” hoping to put some doubt about his doubt about her half-truths into his mind.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

To Eve's surprise, it was rather easy for a twice fired security servant to get a job. Within a week of returning to London and one job interview at Risk Management LLC, she was employed. She was on a team with five other people doing Brexit cost-benefit analysis for various companies trying to determine if moving headquarters to within EU borders was cost prohibitive. Nothing like chasing after a psychopathic serial killer for hire.

Niko had initially suggested she might want to take some time off, but Eve needed the distraction. If she wanted to make her marriage work (and she did, she really did) she couldn’t keep thinking about Villanelle. In the beginning, she committed to being the best wife she could to Niko. Kept her 9-to-5 hours at work. Uncomplainingly attended all his work friends’ get-togethers. Never missed bridge club. She did the boring small talk, laughed at their terrible jokes, and smiled fake smiles hoping that at some point she wouldn’t have to fake so much.

Even with all her assurances to Niko and herself, Eve started making compromises early on. She needed to if she wanted to keep from going mad. At first, she only set up Google alerts for high profile suspicious deaths. But with any addiction, she needed more and began to make larger and larger compromises. Searching databases only at work during her lunch break became doing in-depth research of Villanelle’s victims whenever she wasn’t busy at work turned into staying late at night to untangle shell corporations’ finances. But it still wasn’t enough. Eve’s obsession started to disrupt her sleep. She’d wait for Niko to fall asleep at which point she, not sneaks, but quietly tip-toes down to the kitchen, to do a few hours of cross-referencing dates of Villanelle suspected murders and with the dates she was away from Paris.

Not long after she came back to London, Eve joined a shooting club equipped for military training exercises. The approval process to possess a firearm was quicker than she expected because of her past security service. Many of her late nights at ‘’work” she actually spent target shooting. Before long she could field strip and reassemble a 9mm Glock and fire off ten rounds in the dead center of five targets in under three minutes. She found her shooting skills thrilling. Felt the power of being proficient with a gun, of being able to handle herself in a tight situation when it would inevitability arise.

Her gun, however, had been the downfall of her and Niko’s marriage. He was stupid. At first, he had suspected Eve was having an affair. It had been almost two months and Eve had been “working” late all week and he found her several times huddled in front of her laptop doing “work”.

“I’m going to be late at work again tonight,” Eve says offhand to Niko as she skims over some notes she took early that morning shoveling eggs into her mouth.

He watched her pour over whatever she was reading, searching her face for any kind of hint about what “work” actually was before asking, “Are you having an affair?” His eyes pleading for her to tell him the truth.

Eve chokes on her eggs, bursting into nervous laughter, “What?! No, of course not! What makes you say that?”

“It’s just you’ve been working late and I’ve noticed you at your laptop late at night.”

“Oh, well, it’s just work. You know I love you. I would never cheat on you. I don’t have enough energy to see two people. It’s just you.” Eve frowns thinking about the double meaning of “It’s just you.” She thinks, “Why hadn’t I said ‘It’s only you?’”

Niko drops his suspicions about an affair, but he couldn’t drop his issue with her gun. “You didn’t even tell me there was a loaded gun in our house! You didn’t even ask!”

“Because I knew you would react like this!”

“Why do you even need one? You were fired from the two branches of the security services! Is there an MI7 I don’t know about?” he shouts.

Smarting from his low blow, “No! I mean yes! I do need a gun! And there is no MI7. And you know I where I work!”

“Do I? Because I know you don’t need a gun there! So why don’t you tell me why you have one?” A beat as he draws some connections. “Does it have to do with why you wake up at night screaming? And do not tell me it’s because your arms are asleep!”

“I-I can’t.” And that’s it. Those two words ended their four years of marriage.

Eve’s divorce had been a month ago. She only saw Niko twice, once to sign the papers and a second time to pack up and move all her stuff to her new apartment. Her personal life might be a wreck but her professional life couldn’t have been better. She was promoted two weeks ago with the added bonus of getting her own office, which made her extracurricular research project easier to conduct without all the prying eyes.

Not that any of her colleagues were particularly nosey. They exchanged pleasantries. “Hello.” ”Good-night.” “How are you?” They found Eve to be extraordinarily sharp and determined if not a bit obsessive, possessing an intense gaze. Many of her coworkers agreed she reminded them of a hunter. Eve wasn’t friends with them, she wasn’t exactly looking for friends right now, and often ate alone. And that is exactly how she found herself when her phone started buzzing with an unknown number.

Eve’s heart jumps into her throat, she picks up and it’s Carolyn, her stomach drops, asking to meet her. They decide on a café five minutes from Eve. Eve gets there before Carolyn and she thinks of all the possible reasons Carolyn would want to meet with her.

“She can’t possibly fire me again, right? Does she know I’m looking for the Twelve?” The next few minutes are agony as she waits for Carolyn to arrive.

Suddenly, without Eve even noticing, Carolyn is sitting in front of her.

“Uh, Hi,” says Eve.

“Yes, Hello. How have you been?” Eve is about to answer when Carolyn continues as if she never even asked Eve a question, “This may be awkward for you, but I was too quick to let you go in Russia. I was…too hasty to cut you loose…and I would like you to come back.” Carolyn says it like its painful to admit.

Dumbfounded, Eve replies, “I uh-I mean-I have a job.”

“Of course, but I think you should know that Konstantin isn’t dead.”

Eve is speechless and then stammering over a quiet “O-o-oh!”

“Yes,” replies Carolyn as if it should be plain as day to Eve. “There was also a note left by Nadia, addressed to you, from prison, which you’ll have access to. I believe it might be in everyone’s best interests if you returned.”

Eve thinks about everything she’s already uncovered and all the connections she made, how much time it had taken, and sacrifices she had made. “OK, but I want to read that note.”

“Of course, of course,” Carolyn reassures her. “Meet me tomorrow. Here,” and Carolyn slips her a piece of paper with an address on it. “You will need to quit at Risk Management LLC. See you tomorrow at 10 am,” and she’s out the door before Eve can process that Carolyn knew where she worked and exactly what that meant.

 

At ten in the morning the next day, Eve makes her way to the location outside of London written on the slip of paper Carolyn had given her. All the buildings are abandoned interconnected concrete shells. Only a few have windows and for some reason, they’re tinted. Carolyn is waiting for her when she arrives and walks her through a maze of concrete to one of the buildings with tinted windows. An elevator ride ten stories up and past a steel door is Konstantin laying on a hospital bed hooked up to a dialysis machine, but very much alive. Taking a seat in one of the many chairs in the large almost completely empty floor, all three sit in silence waiting for someone to break it.

The air is tense with civility. On a nightstand next to Konstantin’s hospital bed are small cakes and tea, which strikes Eve as odd, especially since no one is eating them.

“So,” Eve says, “you’re alive.”

“Yes” replies Konstantin slowly.

“You still haven’t told me exactly why you’re bringing me back in or why I’m here,” Eve’s eyes flick to Konstantin then back to Carolyn, “or why’s he’s here.”

Carolyn clasps her hands and says “Well an assassin from a secret organization tried to kill him,” looking to Konstantin, “and he is our best possible lead to find said secret organization.”

“Um, yeah, but why am I back and what’s he got to do with it? You fired me!” Konstantin watches the back and forth like a tennis match

“Konstantin has made it very clear that she, Villanelle, is currently our best lead to apprehend the Twelve. He can no longer show his face, as they think he is dead. Their organization is so compartmentalized that without an active contact it is almost impossible to find leads deeper into the Twelve’s organizational structure. He suggested that you might be in the best position to help lure Villanelle and convince her to help us.”

“Lure Villanelle?” Eve asks, incredulous. “Ha!”

“She likes you,” Konstantin interjects. “I know where she lives, but if we send anyone else they will not make it past her front door.” As he’s saying this Eve’s heartbeat quickens and she’s finding the room to be too hot and she’s having trouble keeping her breathing under control. Konstantin and Carolyn are talking at her but all Eve can hear is “It hurts!” over and over. She abruptly gets up to wash her face in the sink on the far side of the room and attempts to choke back the vomit threating to come up.

Eve doesn’t hear Carolyn walk over to her because of all the blood rushing in her ears and the water rushing down the drain but can sense her standing beside her, waiting. Eventually, Eve shuts off the water, wipes her face, looks at Carolyn, sighs and says “I’ve already been to her apartment.” Carolyn only raises her eyebrows. “And I stabbed her.”

Carolyn’s mouth drops open. A few seconds pass, “You stabbed Villanelle, our only lead to the Twelve?”

“She killed Bill!” roars Eve loud enough for Konstantin to hear as if shouting it could make it be the true reason Eve stabbed Oksana.

“I am aware. Is she dead?” Eve’s stomach drops as Carolyn voices the thing Eve is most afraid of. Eve’s afraid she killed Villanelle and afraid of how easy it had been for her.

“I don’t think so,” says Eve hesitantly. “I-she got away, the trail went cold and I came back to London.”

Carolyn thinks for a minute and asks, “You were in Paris for three days?”

“I cleaned up her apartment and waited for her to come back, which she never did. So, I don’t know where she is. Wait, you knew I was in Paris for three days?”

“Ah, we’ll send a team to search it and you’ll need a debrief.”

Relief floods Eve at the prospect of not returning to Villanelle’s flat and at leaving the note with the old woman instead of on Villanelle’s bed. Eve did catch Carolyn’s tactful dodge and repeats more firmly, “You knew I was in Paris for three days?”

“I was concerned when you hadn’t boarded the plane and upon learning of your flight to Pairs, assumed you needed a break before seeing your husband, sorry, ex-husband.”

Eve looks at Carolyn in disbelief at the violation of her privacy, but before she can say anything Carolyn is already walking back to Konstantin’s bed and Eve follows, frustrated. Carolyn recites to Konstantin what Eve told her. Eve looks out the tinted windows as Carolyn catches Konstantin up on Eve’s Parisian adventures and Konstantin looks knowingly at Eve. Eventually Carolyn signals it is time to leave telling Konstantin she will inform him if the team discovers anything searching Villanelle’s flat in one week’s time. Konstantin thanks Carolyn and looks pointedly at Eve as they go. Departing Konstantin’s safe house, Carolyn tells Eve where to meet for the debrief tomorrow before dropping her off at the nearest bus stop.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

It’s a cool rainy spring night when Villanelle arrives at Heathrow. The date for her kill isn’t for another week, but she wants to be here before Skinny arrives. She still doesn’t know his name and she doesn’t care enough to ask. The anticipation is excruciating. She hadn’t felt the thrill of the kill in months and her sex life wasn’t fulfilling. Villanelle needs this to go well for both personal and professional reasons.

 

It wasn’t just the anticipation of her impending kill that drove her to arrive early. She needed to see Eve. Some cyber sleuthing before she had left told her Eve got a divorce and is employed at a risk management firm ironically called Risk Management LLC. Looking at Eve’s picture on the firm’s website was the first time Villanelle had seen her outside of the memories in her head in three months. She had felt like she was having a heart attack and her scar ached and her blood ran hot. She could have come with only a touch or two. Instead, she took a cold shower. Eve shouldn’t have this kind of hold over her.

Nevertheless, Villanelle arrived a week early to London hoping to see Eve in person. Obviously, she couldn’t confront Eve. She knew she wasn’t ready and she didn’t want the Twelve to see the two of them together. Villanelle was just going to wait to see Eve at work and follow her home from a discreet distance. Everyday. For a week. And then the job would be over and Villanelle could return to Barcelona and hopefully be a bit freer of Eve.

 

Unbeknownst to Villanelle, she wasn’t the only one in London. Vik and Skinny had not believed the tale Villanelle had spun for them at the winery outside of Rome. After she boarded the jet back to Barcelona, the two men agreed to track all of Sloane Weber’s purchases. They were notified of Sloane’s flight to London as her passport was scanned at the El Prat Airport. As Villanelle disembarked from her plane, Skinny was waiting for her by arrivals in a wig and fake handlebar mustache.

 

Villanelle steped out into the night, completely unaware of her extra baggage, to flag down a cab to take her to a hotel. Skinny does the same and trails her through London.


	3. I get to keep my teeth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Villanelle has some fun in London, Eve does not

Eve called in sick to work the day before to meet Carolyn and Konstantin and she called in sick again today. She didn’t want to quit her job just yet even though Carolyn had told her she should. Eve couldn’t bring herself to do it. She wanted a better idea about how this was going to play out, whatever this was. After everything that happened in Russia, including Carolyn meeting Villanelle in prison and lying about it, Eve couldn’t trust her. She wasn’t going to quit her job just because Carolyn asked her too. That saying about meeting your heroes is true, they’ll only disappoint you.

Instead of taking a whole day off, Eve takes a half day hoping the morning debrief will be relatively quick so she can return to work around lunch. Carolyn had given Eve another slip of paper with a different address and instructions to be there at 9 am. The building she was to report to is relatively close to where Eve lives, only a few bus stops away.

Eve left her apartment dressed in ankle high rain boots, slim black jeans, white button-up shirt under a black rain jacket, with her hair tied up making sure to grab an umbrella on her way out the door. It rained the night before and the forecast predicted rain all day into the following morning. Stepping out, she felt a few raindrops and opened her umbrella. It was going to be a long day and she didn’t want to be wet and cold.

Walking to the bus stop and during the ride to the debrief, Eve mentally reviewed her plan for how she was going to handle questions from her integrator.

“Interviewer,” she mentally chides herself, “Carolyn had said interview right? A debrief yes, but more like interview. She was being interviewed. It wasn’t going to be an interrogation.”

The night before Eve decided to only be as truthful as necessary. She imagined the briefing would start with a question about why she went to Paris.

“Elena had told me there was a young man who died in an apartment building in Paris. The same toxin that had killed Carla De Mann was found in his system. I went to check out the lead.”

“You had just been fired, why would you need to follow up on this lead?” the integra-er-interviewer would ask.

“I heard her, Villanelle, in my head telling me to come to Paris,” but she can’t tell anyone about hearing voices in her head, much less a psychopath’s. She would be committed if she told anyone this. Instead, she’d lie and say, “I was pissed and bitter and maybe even a little petty. I wanted to catch her and bring her in and rub it in Carolyn’s snide face. A bit childish, but it’s the truth.” It was not the truth. Carolyn’s face can be a bit snide sometimes, but that’s beside the point.

Villanelle telling Eve to go to Pairs hadn’t been the only instance of her in Eve’s head. Sometimes, late at night, when Eve needed a break from reading financial documents and autopsy reports, she would go internet shopping. Putting clothes in her shopping cart, but never buying anything. Occasionally Eve would indulge and look at clothing much nicer than anything she had ever bought herself. It was in those moments she would hear Villanelle’s voice whispering to her to buy it. Telling her how nice she would look. Hearing Villanelle speaking to her was a sign she needed to get some sleep. In those moments, Eve just shuts her laptop without bothering to turn it off and goes to bed trying her hardest to ignore Villanelle.

Then, there was what to say about Madame Tattevin. Eve couldn’t decide how much she should tell whoever was going to debrief her about Villanelle’s neighbor/spy. She had been waffling about it all night, but in the morning, eating scrambled eggs, Eve decides to wait and see how much her interrogators knew about the old woman. No reason to reveal her hand too soon.

Eve wasn’t concerned about the matter of explaining why she stabbed Villanelle. She figured she could play it off as self-defense. And of course she had to clean up the blood and hide what she had done. She was a private citizen who had stabbed a powerful secret organization’s personal psychopathic assassin and didn’t want them to order a hit on her. The trickiest bit was going to be explaining how she got close enough to said psychopathic assassin to deal a potentially fatal blow and remain unscathed.

Eve thought back to that moment in Villanelle’s flat every day trying to understand what had happened, what went wrong. She had been completely honest with Villanelle. Eve did and still does think about her all the time. She still wants to know everything. The last part though, knowing everything, scares her a little now. Thinking back, Eve had meant everything, especially what it felt like to kill. Eve wielded her honestly like a weapon with such precision that Villanelle’s defenses fell away and it was Oksana laying across from her. Eve had been so blinded by her fury at losing two jobs, her marriage, and Bill at the hands of Villanelle, she hadn’t noticed Oksana. She thought Villanelle was still playing her.

Villanelle’s disbelief that Eve could stab her pushed Eve past her breaking point. She sunk the knife into Oksana even though she was aiming for Villanelle. Only after Oksana’s confessions had Eve realized her mistake. Eve had panicked and pulled the knife out after Villanelle, or Oksana, had asked her not to. After all this time she still doesn’t know if it was the young Russian woman or the assassin telling her not to pull the knife out. Not that it really mattered, because after Eve removed the knife the situation had spiraled out of control and Villanelle and Oksana were gone in more ways than one.

The thought of explaining all of this to whoever was interrogating her sounded exhausting. The idea she could seduce an international assassin to get close enough to do serious damage sounds improbable to Eve and she actually lived through it. So she decided to wing it. If worse came to worse she would play dumb. Say she got the jump on her or something.

“Whatever, they’re never going to know,” Eve huffs to herself as she steps off the bus at her stop.

Looking to her left and right to figure out which direction the numbers on the buildings ascended, she heads to her left. Walking down a narrow alley sandwiched between two terraced houses and one quick right turn later, Eve is looking at her destination, an abandoned pub. Pulling a face in resignation, Eve knocks on the door. Next thing she knows she face to face with Kenny. Eve can’t help but smile and Kenny smiles back saying, “Come in, come in!”

Elena is waiting just inside with a quick hug and a, “We missed you!”

“I missed you guys too,” she says a little shyly. “So are the interroga-, uh sorry, interviewers already here or am I early.”

“We’re your interrogators!” chuckles Elena. “Surprise!”

“Oh!”

“Don’t tell me you’re disappointed we aren’t going to waterboard you,” Elena nods to Kenny. Kenny looks a bit like a deer in the headlights.

“No, it’s great! It’s just…Carolyn made it seem like a big deal yesterday.”

“Well, that’s Mum, always serious.”

“I still have a hard time wrapping my head around that,” Elena says to Kenny.

“Yeah, well, do you want to get started?” Kenny points to a card table over in the corner of the pub.

“The sooner this is over, the sooner I can go back to work.”

“What do you mean ‘go back to work’? Work is here. Carolyn said you had agreed to join back up,” states a confused and surprised Elena.

“I wasn’t going to lose a third job before I knew exactly what I was getting myself into at a possible fourth job. I’m sick of having to look for jobs,” dropping her bag on the table and sitting down, “it’s exhausting!”

All three of them are sitting at the card table smiling at each other, happy at being reunited.

“So, where do you want to start? I was thinking right after I told you about the body in Paris, but whatever works best for you!”

Eve can’t believe how easy this is going to be and feels a little bit guilty about lying to her friends. But honestly, how is she supposed to explain whatever had been going on between her and Villanelle? Elena takes a few notes. Kenny listens with a slightly horrified look on his face. They don’t even have any question for her when she finishes and asks, “So, do you have any questions?”

Eve puts her hair back up (she hadn’t realized she had taken it down) and asks what they’ve been doing since she was fired. They tell her it was mostly about figuring out the logistics of how to get Konstantin into the UK without compromising his identity or tipping-off the Twelve that he was still alive. Carolyn convinced Vlad to get Konstantin out of Russia saying it would only draw the ire of the Twelve if he stayed. Initially Vlad had resisted, but Carolyn told him it could be possible that all branches of Russian intelligence might be compromised by the Twelve. She, however, had an entire department outside the reach of the Twelve.

“Really? He believed that? A whole department?” asks Eve disbelievingly.

“Yeah, we do have our own department,” says Kenny

“We have recently grown by 33%,” says Elena dryly as she tries to keep her face serious.

The two continue telling Eve about scaring the hospital staff who operated on Konstantin into declaring him dead and staying quiet about it. Then how they had to smuggle him into the UK.

“What about the sniper team watching his building?” Eve had noticed some figures in urban camouflage on top of the buildings nearest Konstantin’s building.

“They don’t actually know what they’re guarding. In fact, the only people who do know are us, Carolyn, and the doctors who are security service agents, but they were never told his identity,” answers Elena.

“Oh, well, it sounds like you have all your bases covered.”

“Yea-wait! There’s one more thing,” Kenny says as he suddenly gets up and goes behind the empty bar to grab a piece of paper for Eve. “Nadia, before she was murdered, left a note addressed to you.”

Eve takes it from Kenny and reads ‘Cyryl Laine’.

“Curious,” remarks Eve.

Elena asks Eve if she knows who that is or what it means. Eve lies and says she doesn’t.

Elena continues, “We’ve done a little digging, but it appears that he’s just a Finnish shipping magnate. Kenny could get more information, but Carolyn wants to take things slow while we have Konstantin. Doesn’t want to set off any alarms.”

Thirty minutes later they say their goodbyes and Eve makes her way to Risk Management LLC after agreeing to take another half day off to meet with Carolyn and Konstantin the following day.

 

“How was the dentist?” the receptionist, Patricia, asks with a cheerfulness Eve finds grating.

“What?” Eve hadn’t heard her, her mind elsewhere.

“The dentist?”

“Oh, uh, good. I get to keep my teeth,” and before Patricia can ask after her teeth, Eve walks straight back to her office and shuts her door. She stares at her reflection in her computer monitor for a second trying to decide what to do. She’s at a crossroad. She hadn’t explicitly told Carolyn she was going to come back. She could still back out of all of this and keep going solo. To that thought, she rolls her eyes and lets out one sarcastic “Ha!” She needs MI6’s resources to find Villanelle but thinking about working with Carolyn makes her hesitate.

Eve pulls out her notes on the Twelve from her bag and flips through until she finds a list of almost thirty names. In the months since returning from Paris, Eve had used Madame Tattevin’s log of Villanelle’s comings and goings to verify all her kills. Of the kills she could definitively attribute to Villanelle, Eve had dug into all of their personal and financial histories for a year before every victim was assassinated to see why a secret international organization would be motivated to order a hit. From this, Eve was compiling a list of possible Twelve members and to her relief, Cyryl Laine was on it.

Smiling to herself, Eve decides then and there to join MI6 again. Recently she hadn’t been making as much headway as she would have liked. She realizes she had no practical way to narrow down her list. Now though, she had a link to Villanelle, a way back to her. Eve undoes her hair tie, runs her fingers over her scalp and through her hair to release the tension that had been building all day.

Eve uses the rest of the workday to pull a few more articles and files on Cyryl Laine and his shipping businesses before asking for twenty days off for what she described in her email as ‘intense oral surgery’.

“Patricia’s going to be confused,” thinks Eve

At five she packs up and leaves to go home. With her hair still down, opening her umbrella to shield herself from the rain, Eve feels surprisingly light walking towards home despite the gloomy weather.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Villanelle had been sitting in the café across form Risk Management LLC since 3 o’clock. She would have been there at four in the morning, but the café opened at six and she really didn’t want to admit to herself that Eve still had that kind of influence over her. So Villanelle compromised and decided on 3 pm. Three was early enough to catch Eve if she left work early but late enough that she could pretend she wasn’t being weak.

Two hours later, Villanelle gulps and feels her heart stutter as she spots a mess of amazing black hair walk out of Risk Management LLC’s fronts door. Her hand moves over the spot where Eve stabbed her. She sits ramrod straight, eyes only for Eve, watching as Eve’s gaze slips along the storefronts, including the café. Villanelle can feel herself burning. She hadn’t realized she was holding her breath until Eve walked down the street out of sight breaking whatever spell Eve put her under.

Waiting till the count of five, Villanelle exits the café feeling a bit lightheaded hidden underneath her umbrella. She spots Eve a minute later waiting at a bus stop. She slips into a store to watch and wait. A bus soon pulls up and Eve boards. Villanelle hails a cab and orders the driver to follow behind. Seventeen minutes later, Eve gets off at the third stop and Villanelle tells the driver to let her off around the corner on the opposite street.

Peeking around some shrubs, Villanelle watches Eve make a right down a street lined with duplexes on one side and a playground on the other. Eve walks up the steps to her apartment, digs through her bag for her keys, and unlocks her door before disappearing behind it. Villanelle slips out from behind the shrubs and walks nonchalantly down Eve’s street pretending to tie her shoe in front of Eve’s apartment.

“47 Brickelbriar Avenue,” notes Villanelle to herself. She’ll wait till Eve leaves tomorrow morning before she makes her next move. Villanelle goes back to her hotel planning for her return.

 

Back in her hotel room, Villanelle crafts a plan to break into Eve’s house. She goes back out to get everything she needs and tries to go to sleep, but her brain won’t shut off. Tossing and turning, their scar aching, her fantasies preventing her from sleeping. Fantasies of Eve kissing her. Fantasies of Eve stabbing her. Fantasies of Eve fucking her. It’s unbearably frustrating not being able to touch Eve, to hurt Eve the way Eve hurt her. Masturbating isn’t the balm that it normally is whenever Villanelle’s thoughts drift to Eve.

“Ah!” Villanelle screams in vexation as she pulls her fingers out and wipes them on the hotel bed sheets. Its only three in the morning, but Villanelle takes a cold shower, puts on her disguise, and exists down the fire escape at the back of her hotel. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Eve wakes up screaming. Months after stabbing Oksana she still has trouble sleeping. Her nightmares vary. Sometimes she replays stabbing Oksana. When she was briefly back with Niko, she occasionally dreamt she stabbed him. From time to time Eve is stabbing herself. The scariest of all though is the recurring dream of Oksana stabbing her. Whenever Eve dreamt this dream, she woke up in a sheen of sweat, panting, and wet between her legs. She wasn’t sure which of them was worse. This morning she had been stabbing Oksana.

“Ugh,” groans Eve, hands rubbing her face in frustration.

She throws off her sheets and goes to the bathroom to take a cold shower. When she’s done it’s still too early to meet Carolyn and Konstantin. She makes some breakfast and eats it looking out the window. Noticing the homeless-looking woman sleeping on a bench in the playground, Eve thinks how nice it would be to be anyone else, even her. Less complicated she thinks. Fewer international assassins to chase.

Lost in her thoughts, Eve didn’t realize that she was now late. She rushes around her apartment grabbing her bag, phone, and keys and is out the door.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Villanelle had been staking out Eve’s apartment for almost five hours before she saw Eve run off in a hurry. Disguised as a homeless woman ‘sleeping’ on the park across from Eve’s apartment, Villanelle waited ten minutes after Eve left before ambling across the street, pausing to make sure no one was paying attention to her. Walking down the alleyway between the duplexes, she climbs over the fence, and quickly makes her way to Eve’s backdoor to pick the lock and let herself in.

Villanelle wasn’t sure what to expect, but it was startling to see the only pieces of furniture in Eve’s apartment were a table with two chairs in the dining room and Eve’s bed and dresser in the bedroom.

“Sad,” she says mockingly with a small disappointed frown.

After her quick survey, she makes a beeline for Eve’s refrigerator. There’s not much, but Villanelle takes Eve’s last slice of cheese (it’s the least Eve owns her) and eats it as she takes a tour of Eve’s apartment roaming from room to room trying to imagine how Eve spends her time.

In Eve’s study, Villanelle comes across several documents and photos tacked up across the walls. Taking a closer look, Villanelle immediately recognizes several of her kills.

Smiling broadly, “She is obsessed with me!” Villanelle thinks.

The documents consist of her victims’ finances, criminal records, and known associates. Apparently, its anything and everything Eve could dig up. Some of the kills aren’t hers though. Villanelle takes those off the wall and tosses them in the trash.

Wandering back to Eve’s bedroom, Villanelle looks through Eve’s dresser and closet.

“Ugh!’ remarks Villanelle about Eve’s clothes. Boring.

On top of the dresser, Eve, Villanelle notices, has kept the perfume she gave her. Grabbing it, she looks over to Eve’s unmade bed and can see that Eve sleeps on the left side. Villanelle applies some of the perfume to her wrists and neck and lays down on the untouched side of Eve’s bed. She can’t help but think of those final moments in Paris. Can’t help but think of the what-ifs as she reaches out to touch Eve’s side. Villanelle grabs Eve’s pillow and smells it. It smells like what Villanelle guesses is Eve’s shampoo. She sighs and gets up leaving Eve’s bedroom with one last look.

She’s finished eating the cheese as she walks into the bathroom. There’s only aspirin, floss, cotton swabs, a toothbrush, and toothpaste in the medicine cabinet. Nothing interesting.

Villanelle notices how white the walls are in Eve’s apartment walking back into the living/dining room. Not a single picture, not even of Niko she delightedly notes. No carpets either. Her initial assessment of Eve’s living situation was only confirmed by her detailed inspection, sad. Not that she thought Eve didn’t deserve it after what she had done.

After her more thorough inspection, there wasn’t much else to see in Eve’s depressingly empty apartment.

Before Villanelle goes through, she leaves a gift for Eve on her kitchen table. Then she disappears the way she came, relocking the back door, climbing over the fence, and making her way back to her hotel to wait for instructions about her impending kill.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

From his own hotel room, the skinny man, whose name happens to be John, watches a green dot on a GPS monitor blinking at possibly 47 or 48 Bricklebriar Avenue. The GPS wasn’t exact enough to determine the specific unit in the duplex.

“And what could you be doing there I wonder?”

Using some public databases and some databases he has access to thanks to the Twelve, he types 47 Bricklebriar Avenue into several search bars.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

It was late into the night when Eve finally got home after her long day meeting with Carolyn and Konstantin. She didn’t understand why she needed to tell Elena and Kenny what happened between her and Villanelle in Paris if she was just going to rehash it for Konstantin the next day. It was mentally and emotionally exhausting to tell them about it. The untruths she has to keep straight. Emotions she has to fake or hide. Remembering “it hurts” over and over again was unbearable.

And Konstantin hadn’t helped. Asking rather perceptive questions about Eve and Villanelle that Eve didn’t like thinking about. Questions deep down she knows the answer to but doesn’t want to admit knowing. Questions Eve was still thinking about as she flicked on the lights in her kitchen and set her mail down on the counter. Questions which initially distracted her from the green and brown colored object on her kitchen table.

Eve changed into something more comfortable to make and eat dinner. Checking the fridge, there’s not much. She pulls out some bread and processed deli meat. She swears she still had some cheese. It isn’t until Eve turns around with her sandwich on a plate that she sees it. It takes her a moment to understand what she’s looking at, but when it clicks, she screams and drops her plate.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Over the next four days Eve meets with Carolyn and Konstantin in the morning at his safe house (more like fortress) and with Kenny and Elena in the afternoon at the abandoned pub. Most of the time Carolyn and Eve wait in silence (Eve prefers that they don’t talk) as Konstantin sleeps. The bullet Villanelle had shot Konstantin with was a Black Rose. It mushroomed inside him upon impact tearing parts of his colon, stomach, liver, and finally, shredding one of his kidneys.

The Russian surgeons who performed his operation had not been able to remove all the bullet fragments and living with one kidney and half a liver would have been hard enough without a partially damaged colon and stomach. So most of the time Konstantin sleeps as his body tries desperately to heal and Eve and Carolyn wait for him to wake up to talk about the Twelve.

In the afternoon, Eve brings whatever notes she took from her morning talks with Konstantin to Kenny and Elena. The three of them follow up on his intel. Most of the time they try to verify what he says is true, which is extremely difficult. A secret international organization involved in covert criminal activity knows how to stay secret. Konstantin also told Carolyn his superior’s name, but it had turned out to be fake. Carolyn had a facial composite of Konstantin’s superior made to run through facial recognition software, but that too came up empty.

It appeared to be impossible to get concrete answers from anyone other than one of the twelve members of the Twelve.

In the downtime, after whatever flimsily lead Konstantin had given Eve in the morning for them to chase down in the afternoon inevitably leads nowhere, but before its time to call it quits for the day, Kenny and Elena also fill Eve in on everything else Konstantin had said after she was fired and before she was re-hired. Most of what they tell her Eve had already intuited.

One thing Eve hadn’t expected for them to tell her was that Kenny confronted Carolyn about getting Villanelle released from prison.

“Really?” says Eve looking at Kenny with a little bit of awe, surprised he would confront his mother.

“Yeah. It was super awkward,” says Elena with a pained look on her face remembering the tense conversation.

“What did she say?”

“Ah, just that Konstantin asked her for a favor to have Villanelle transported to an offsite detention center so British Intelligence to take custody of her,” reveals Kenny.

Eve’s initially confused. “She what? Why would Konstantin-,” and then she suddenly realizes. “Oh my God! Konstantin used Carolyn to get Villanelle released and Carolyn hadn’t known she was being used until it was too late!?”

Kenny nods and Elena adds that Carolyn is still pissed at Konstantin about it.

“Yeah. I can tell. Sitting with them these past four days have been like walking into a room after you heard your parents fighting.”

Elena symphonizes and says, “Hopefully it’ll be better once the three of us are gone.”

Carolyn told Eve earlier in the week that she, Kenny, and Elena were all going to Paris to investigate Villanelle’s flat and she, Eve, was to continue taking notes with Konstantin while they were away for three days.

“Probably not,” says Eve. In fact, nothing sounded worse.

 

That is Eve found herself, in Konstantin’s ‘fortress’, three days after the three of them left for Paris. Eve is restless. Thinking about other people in Oksana’s flat keeps giving her an unsettled feeling. Konstantin seems to pick up on her frustration because he repeatedly makes small comments about Villanelle. Telling Eve stories about some of her kills to make her uncomfortable. (Not that this tactic works.) It’s the more personal stories, the stories where Eve can feel Oksana peering out from behind her Villanelle mask, that unsettle her the most. It troubles her that she can’t reconcile the two, Villanelle and Oksana. It troubles her that she stabbed Oksana. It troubles her that she thought she liked stabbing Villanelle.

Eve was glad that Kenny and Elena would be returning to London tonight. Spending three days alone listening to Konstantin snore and frustrate her had been both boring and tiring. She thought about murdering him sometimes, not that she was that kind of person. Of course, Eve thought, Konstantin must be bored too. Who wouldn’t be after being stuck in here for so long. Eve was his only source of entertainment and he found annoying her most entertaining. Like now. He was being very annoying.

“You said that you were able to surprise Villanelle and that is how you stabbed her?” asks Konstantin in a way that tells Eve he doesn’t believe her story.

“Yes,” she replies as if bored with his line of questioning, keeping her eyes on her laptop at the desk she set up so she could still get some work done while waiting for Konstantin to spill whatever secrets he still had left in him. “She wasn’t home. I found a knife in her apartment. Hid behind her front door. When she walked in, I stabbed her.”

“You know,” says Konstantin as if playing with the idea, “I have never been able to surprise her.”

“I must be the better secret agent then,” says Eve with finality, trying to end the conversation.

Konstantin would not be deterred however. “I think you are lying. I think sh-“

But Eve doesn’t get to hear what Konstantin thinks because there’s the tight crash of a window shattering to her left. Mere seconds later, as Eve is turning to look where the sound came from, she can feel something warm bloom across the right side of her face.


	4. God, how did you manage to stab me?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Villanelle gets the job done and Eve gets caught in the middle

PRESENT – EVE – LONDON

 

“Ok Eve, take us through it one more time.”

“You’ve kept me here for two days!! I’ve ‘taken you thought it’ like eleven times already!” Eve looks back and forth between to two middle-aged men sitting across from her. The one on her right is from MI6 whose name is Mike or Mark, something with an M. Eve can’t remember. It had been a very long and very stressful two days stuck in an anonymous room in an anonymous building in an anonymous part of London. Mike or Mark, whoever he was, had been playing good cop. The guy on her right however, from MI5, had been playing bad cop. Eve couldn’t remember his name. “What more could you possibly need?” she asks, exasperated.

Bad cop growls, “Well Ms. Park, there are several inconsistencies in your events of what transpired two days ago. We would like it if you would stop lying to us.”

“I’m not lying!” snaps Eve.

“I know you’re not Eve.” Good cop reaches out as if to touch Eve’s hand in a reassuring manner but thinks better of it upon seeing Eve’s severe look. “I imagine,” he continues, placing his hand awkwardly in the space between them on the table, “that after everything you went through, remembering everything that happened must be difficult.”

“No. It’s not. I remember exactly what happened and I’ve already told you.”

The two men look at each other and bad cop says, “Why don’t you try once more.” More order than a request.

“And please start from the beginning,” chimes in good cop smartly.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

TWO DAY EARLIER – EVE – LONDON

 

Eve really didn’t want to see Konstantin today. He had been annoying her all week. Thankfully though, it was the last day she had to see him alone. He behaved a little better when Carolyn was there. Eve figured she would just suck it up and count down the hours until Elena and Kenny came back from Paris. She would ask Carolyn if she could work with the two of them more in the hopes of avoiding Konstantin’s knowing questions.

She felt naked around him. As if he could see through her, to the real her. Places in herself she avoided looking. And his questions didn’t help. All week he had been dancing around what he really wanted to ask. That last day, he was asking her how a career desk agent could have surprised Villanelle, an elite assassin at the top of her game, before he finally stopped beating around the bush and said, “I think you are lying. I think sh-“.

Konstantin never got to finish his thought. In fact, he could never have another thought again.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

PRESENT – EVE – LONDON

 

“And that’s when the shit hit the fan,” sighs Eve wearily.

“So you’ve said. Keep going,” barks bad cop.

Glaring at him, thinking she would like to shoot him in the head too, Eve says, “I could hear a muffled wet popping sound to my right and when I looked…”

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

TWO DAYS EARLIER – EVE – LONDON

 

To her left, Eve could see what appeared to be a live feed to the outside of the building. Even with the sound of the window shattering and its remains on the floor, it still took Eve a second to register what she was seeing. A split second later, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Konstantin’s head explode in a bloody red mess. Bits of bone and brain and drops of blood hitting her across the right side of her face.

Eve is stock-still in shock. Doesn’t dive for cover. Doesn’t run to escape. She touches the blood on her face in disbelief, smearing it. Looking at her now bloody fingers, then to what was once Konstantin’s head but is now only a shattered skull, the gears in her undamaged skull start turning. Her shock starts wearing off. Eve looks from red chaos on Konstantin’s pillow to the empty space where the window was. She miscalculated. A million thoughts are running through her head but the loudest one is, “She’s here!”.

She bolts from her chair, knocking it over, to run to the blown-out window, slipping a little on the broken glass. Eve looks across to the neighboring buildings trying to determine which one the shot could have been taken from. On the roof, she can hear the sniper team discussing the same thing. Eve leans out of the window, unbothered by the height or jagged edges of the broken glass, scanning the surrounding buildings' rooftops for any clue as to where the shot came from or the shooter could be. Above her, she can hear the sniper team doing the same. Eve looks up to see an arm of one of the soldiers pointing at a building maybe 300 meters away. That’s all the information she needs to sprint out of what was once Konstantin’s room, ride down the elevator, towards the indicated building.

Approaching the building, Eve turns a corner and reverses back around it when she sees a tall bald man jogging ahead of her in the same direction. Eve unclips her gun holster and clicks the safety off, taking a second to catch her breath and assess her options.

Baldy is wearing tactical gear similar to the sniper team, but not the exact same, so he wasn’t British security service. He doesn’t have a rifle with him, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t leave it on the roof after he shot Konstantin. But Eve knows it was her. She can feel it.

“What else would she be doing in London?” thinks Eve. Her gut is also telling her to follow Baldy. He will lead her to her.

Taking a peek around the corner, Eve sees him far enough ahead of her that she can either run or hide if he turns around. She trails him for about eight minutes when he finally enters another abandoned building, this one without any windows. With the sound of his footfalls coming from above her, Eve knows he must be going up. She counts to ten before entering with her gun drawn. She trained for this. She can do this.

Carefully sweeping each level, she makes her way up the building.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

PRESENT – EVE – LONDON

 

“Can we take a break? I need to pee.”

“Yeah, when you get done telling us the whole truth.”

“Fine, but it’s going to smell like piss in here soon,” says Eve petulantly.

Good cop looks appalled and says, “Take five minutes. I’m sure you know where the bathroom is by now.” Eve is out of the room before Mike/Mark can finish his sentence.

In the bathroom, Eve splashes some water on her face and reviews the lies she needs to tell.

Almost a thousand miles away, unbeknownst to Eve, Villanelle is also getting all of her lies straight too.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

PRESENT – VILLANELLE – BARCELONA

 

“Thank you for coming Villanelle,“ her psychologist/interrogator greets her.

Villanelle hums in recognition of his greeting.

“I imagine you know why you are here?” Villanelle nods and he continues. “We would like you to recount your mission in London and later we will talk about why you went dark leaving Paris, ok? Ok. So how was London?”

“London was fine. Pretty quick actually.”

He interrupts her asking, “Then why did you need to get there almost a week before the date of your job? It’s very curious behavior.”

“I went shopping. I love shopping in London. I also went to see a football game. I do not know if you know this,” and as if sharing a secret, “it is much better live than on television.” Villanelle had been careful to do these things to help corroborate her time in London.

“Hmm, so after shopping and football what happened then?”

“Saturday afternoon was when Skinny an-“

“Sorry, who is ‘Skinny’?”

“Oh! Skinny! My partner! I never knew his name. God rest his soul,” she says with fake seriousness.

“John, his name was John.”

“Well, I am going to keep calling him Skinny. I wouldn’t want to dishonor my memory of him. So as I was saying…”

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

TWO DAYS EARLIER – VILLANELLE – LONDON

 

Villanelle had spent her time in London shopping and she did go to a football game, but she would also wait outside Eve’s apartment in the evening to watch her come home. It was all she would allow herself. Like an addict trying to quit, she needed that last little high. She would watch Eve unlock her door and anticipate the kitchen light turning on.

The first night had been the most interesting. Villanelle had had to fight the desperate urge to race across the street and kick down Eve’s front door when she had heard Eve scream.

After that first night though, Villanelle settled into a comfortable routine. She’d shop all day and then hide outside Eve’s apartment in the evening to watch Eve open her front door and turn her lights on and off.

After almost a week of semi-stalking Eve, Skinny texted her Saturday morning telling her to meet him that night after dark in a district of London populated by abandoned buildings. It took her almost half an hour to find him. The place was a maze and he had given her shit directions.

“You are late.”

“Well if you had given me bet-“

Cutting her off, “I don’t need to hear your excuses. If you are ready I will begin explaining what you need to do.”

Villanelle makes a gesture with her hands indicating “by all means”, but she’d really like to make a different gesture.

They walk to the top of the building as he explains what she is to do tomorrow afternoon. She doesn’t understand why the afternoon. It would be much less risky to do this at night, but she obviously doesn’t have any say in how this job is going to go. He finishes explaining and she thinks that it’s going to be a little tricky, but she likes when it’s challenging. She likes showing off.

He turns to leave and Villanelle tries to follow, but he pulls out a gun and tells her she stays here until the hit is complete. Villanelle rolls her eyes and sighs, “Fine. Whatever.”

And really it’s not like she hasn’t waited for hours on roofs to shoot people before, but she was looking forward to seeing Eve arrive at her apartment one last time.

 

Villanelle’s phone alarm wakes her up around midmorning. She starts assembling the sniper rifle Skinny showed her last night. Checking the chamber, she can see only three bullets.

“Of course. Fucking bastard.” No room for error.

She waits for his text message telling her it was time. Why she needed to wait for exactly 2:23 to take the shots, she can’t understand. Chalks it up to him being a control freak.

She waits, bored, visualizing the plan over and over. Committing it to memory to reduce her chance of committing any errors. First, wait for the text message saying 'shoot'. Second, shoot out the tinted tenth story window third from the left on the building 200 meters away. Third, and this is the tricky part because there’s only going to be a two to three second window, find the target and pull the trigger. Fourth, leave the rifle and meet Skinny at another building 1400 meters away. Easy.

Villanelle passes the time thinking about Eve. Thinking about how Eve caused all of this. How she’s partnered with this buffoon because of Eve. How she could maybe forgive Eve. How she could maybe kill Eve. How she would like to fuck Eve. How she would like Eve to fuck her. It’s frustrating, letting another person have this much power over her. And that’s what she’s thinking as she lines up the scope of the rifle, making sure to stay behind cover so the sniper team can’t see her.

Three minutes before 2:23. She waits.

Three minutes pass and it's 2:23, and no text.

“So, unprofessional!”

It’s not until 2:34 that Skinny texts her, “What are you fucking doing? Fucking shoot!”

Huffing an annoyed breath, Villanelle realigns her scope and fires off the first round shattering the window. And Eve is there, almost right behind it. Only five feet from her bullet’s trajectory. Villanelle’s heart is beating like she’s sprinting a marathon, her pulse jumping. She can see Eve through her scope turning to look at the window, confused about what she just did to it. And to the right of Eve, Villanelle can see her target. It took her five seconds to get the second shot off, but her aim was impeccable, blowing Konstantin’s head to pieces.

Villanelle can’t pull herself away from looking at Eve through the scope. She watches as Eve just sits there, Konstantin’s blood smeared on her face, looking dumbfounded.

“Move you idiot!” whispers Villanelle to Eve from 200 meters away. Eve starts to move, but instead of taking cover she runs to the window to look out.

“No! Not towards the danger! God, how did you manage to stab me?” but Villanelle is smiling. She can see Eve looking in her direction and she knows it's time to go.

Villanelle races down the stairs to the second rendezvous point. When she gets there, she realizes Skinny is nowhere to be found. She takes advantage of her unsupervised time to look for a weapon, but every floor in the building is empty. It reminds her of Eve’s apartment a little.

Shortly after her search for a weapon, she can hear footsteps coming up the stairs.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

PRESENT – VILLANELLE – BARCELONA

 

“I waited for twenty minutes, but he never showed up to the second rendezvous. I tried to text him, but he did not respond.”

“He must have been too focused on the mission,” muses Villanelle. Continuing, “So I went looking for him down in the empty streets but did not find him. Maybe ten minutes later I heard a gunshot coming from where we were supposed to meet. I snuck up and saw a team of British security officers crowding around his dead body and I ran.” Innocently she adds, “It’s tragic what happened to Skinny. He was such a good partner.”

“Yes, I am sure he was,” drones her psychologist/interrogator unconvinced. “In any case, it seems that you acted in the best way possible. There should not have been a second rendezvous point so close to the target.” Looking up from his notes, “Would you like a break or shall we continue and talk about Paris?”

“No, I am fine. Let’s continue,” and Villanelle easily tells him the same lies she told Vik and the now deceased Skinny.

 

An hour later, her evaluation is complete. She knows she’s in the clear because they hand her another postcard.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

PRESENT – EVE – LONDON

 

Eve returns to the interrogation room feeling slightly more solid. She knows what lies she needs to tell.

“Ready to continue?” asks good cop.

“She better be,” bad cop grumbles.

Ignoring him and glancing at good cop, “Yeah. Uh, where was I?”

Mike/Mark reminds her she had just reached the second building.

“Thanks,” replies Eve. “Right, I was climbing the stairs, checking each floor for Baldy, the man I was following, when I finally found him halfway up. He had his back turned away from me. I asked him to turn around slowly with his hands in the air. Instead, he turned and shot at me. He missed. I returned fire hitting him in the upper leg. He panicked and turned to run. I have no idea where because I was blocking the only exit. I told him to stop. He fired at me over his shoulder, missing me again. I returned fire aiming for his other leg but he tripped and I accidentally shot him in the head.”

“Lucky shot,” scoffs bad cop.

Good cop says, “Right. Ok. We have a few questions.” He looks at his notes as bad cop ask, “Why didn’t you call for backup when you found him?”

“I wasn’t thinking clearly. I had just seen a man get his head blown off.”

Good cop asks, “The blood patterns at the scene aren’t quite consistent with your story.”

Eve counters with, ”Blood pattern ‘science’ isn’t actually a science and is often inconsistent with how crimes actually happen.”

They pelt her with questions rapid fire.

“Why do you have a gun?”

“After what happened to me in Paris, it felt like a necessary precaution.” Her interrogators had been given the details of Eve’s previous work with Carolyn, including what had happened in Paris when she wasn’t working for Carolyn.

“Do you normally carry it with you?”

“Yes, after Paris.”

“Do you have a permit for it?”

“Yes.”

“How did you know where the shot came from?”

“I didn’t. I just ran in the direction the sniper team indicated.”

“There’s some speculation about a second operative, know anything about that?”

“I only encountered a man, one man.”

Bad cop is on a roll now. His voice grows steadily louder as he assaults her with question after question. “Why did you run after the shooter? Why didn’t you call for backup at the second building? As you said, you just saw a man’s head blown off? What could have possessed you, an unqualified twice fired career desk agent to run towards danger? How did you know you weren’t also a target?”

Eve is tired. Physically from lack of sleep and mentally from the verbal chess game she’s been playing with the men across from her. They had been assailing her with questions for two days straight. Bad cop’s insinuation that she wasn’t qualified, that she couldn’t handle being a field agent, sent her over the edge. Hearing someone doubt her and underestimate her again infuriated her.

Eve’s combined anger and exhaustion caused her to slip up and confesses, “I knew I wasn’t a target because I knew she wouldn’t kill me like that! She’d want it to be more personal than a bullet through my skull from 200 meters away!”

Eve hands immediately shoot up to cover her mouth once she realizes what she shouted at them.

Bad cop’s face lights up. “I knew it! I knew you were protecting her! We saw your weird shrine to her and the Twelve in your apartment!”

Understanding what bad cop had just confessed to dawns on both him and Eve.

“You searched my apartment without asking me?!”

Good cop looks to bad cop and says, “You are an absolute imbecile, Edward.”

“Shut up Markus! Didn’t you hear her? She confessed to aiding and abetting a wanted criminal!“

In fact, Eve had not confessed to aiding and abetting Villanelle and Markus informed Edward of this, which finally shut Edward up.

Markus, ever playing the good cop, says, “Eve, we only searched your apartment because we thought you could have been a target too, especially after all your past work looking into the Twelve and with what happened in Paris. We were concerned about your safety and were only trying to secure your apartment when we came across all of your ‘research’. How do you know the Twelve don’t know that you are looking into them?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t really care. If the Twelve or Villanelle or whoever they send really wanted to kill me there isn’t much I can do to stop it. If she was going to snipe me, which she wouldn’t, I would have had my head blown off first, not Konstantin.”

“I guess that explains why you ran towards the sniper,” says Markus. “How did you know it was her?”

“I-,” Eve shakes her head and sighs, “She broke into my apartment to return a scarf she stole from me.”

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

NINE DAYS EARLIER – EVE – LONDON

 

Eve screams and drops the plate carrying her sad cheese-less sandwich. In the middle of Eve’s dining room table is her scarf Villanelle had stolen from her in Berlin. Except it’s not really green anymore. It's brown from all of Oksana’s blood. Eve runs back into her bedroom to grab her gun. She makes sure all the doors and windows are locked and searches her apartment for anything else out of place.

In her bedroom, she notices that the side of the bed she doesn’t sleep on smells like the perfume Villanelle gave her. Flicking on the lights in her study, she looks at all the papers tacked on the wall and notices some are missing. Eve sees the missing documents and pictures in the trash.

“Why would she...?” Eve wonders as she peers inside the trashcan then back to the newly empty spaces on her wall. It hits her. Villanelle was telling her those weren’t her kills. Eve had been looking in the wrong direction. She smiles at the thought of Villanelle helping her. Then she frowns, because if Villanelle is in London then something bad was bound to happen, probably to her. She shouldn’t be smiling about it.

“God! What is wrong with me?!”

Eve walks back into the kitchen to inspect her bloody scarf. She picks it up and sniffs. It smells like iron and Villanelle’s perfume. Its Villanelle’s way of telling Eve she can get to her anytime and anywhere. Nowhere is safe for Eve anymore, at least not from Villanelle.

She knows she’s not the only one in danger. Konstantin might be in danger too, but it’s hard for her to care when the relief she hadn’t killed Villanelle engulfs her. Eve is so relieved she cries and starts manically laughing at the thought of crying over being relieved an international assassin she tried to kill isn’t dead and is most likely in London to kill her.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

PRESENT – EVE – LONDON

 

“So let me get this straight. An assassin, regarded as one of the most skilled and prolific by MI6, returned a used article of clothing to you to let you know she was in London to do what exactly?” Edward asks sarcastically, “Go shopping?”

“I mean, yeah, she does like shopping,” Edward throws his hands up in the air in exasperation. He can’t believe what Eve is telling them, “but mostly I thought she was here to stalk me and drive me insane.”

“And did she?” asks Markus.

“No. The only contact I had with her in the week prior to Konstantin’s assassination was when she broke into my apartment.”

“So just to be clear. You did know there were two assailants two days ago?” enquires Markus.

“Not until I saw Baldy. At the time I thought it had been just Villanelle, but I never saw her. Only him. I got into the gunfight and after that, well, you know everything after that.”

Looking down at his notes, mumbling a couple of things to himself, Markus finally says, “You’re free to go, but we might have more questions for you about John Myklebust later on.” Edwards forcefully stands up knocking his chair over and wrenches the door open as if he can’t stand being in a room with Eve any longer.

Eve distractedly asks, “Who’s John Mykle-,“ as her eyes follow Edward out the door.

“Mykelbust. Mr. John Myklebust is the man you shot and killed.”

“Right. Well, like you said, if you have any questions you know how to get contact me.” And with that Eve is free to leave.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED – TWO DAYS EARLIER – VILLANELLE – LONDON

 

Villanelle can hear footsteps as someone stomps up the stairs. It's Skinny.

“YOU-,” he gasps slightly out of breath and pointing accusingly at Villanelle.

Villanelle is taken aback, not quite sure why he’s shouting at her. Skinny puts his hands on his knees to catch his breath after running up the stairs before continuing.

When he can finally breathe, he triumphantly shouts, “You hesitated! I knew you would!”

”I did not hesitate. Konstantin is dead.” As she says this he walks closer to her, pulling out his gun, pointing it at her. He has effectively cut off her only escape. Villanelle can’t even see the stairs behind him.

“I am not talking about him! I was talking about her! You should have shot her too. I gave you three bullets. Instead, you just stared at her through your scope!”

”What are you talking about? I was not staring at her,” says Villanelle defensively. Fear starts to creep up in the back of her mind and down her spine.

“Yes, you were watching her. I know because the scope I gave you doubles as a wireless two-way camera and I had a feed making sure you did not fuck up.”

Villanelle grows cold and still.

“I know you did not try to kill yourself in Paris! You got into an argument with an Asian woman. And today you hesitate to kill an Asian woman! Madame Tattevin had quite a lot of information! Dumb old bitch! If I were a betting man I’d bet she is the same women who tried to kill you!”

With each of his declarations Villanelle can feel his madness growing. Like a shark when it senses blood in the water. He and Villanelle can both sense the impending bloodbath.

Almost playfully, with a manic smile on his face he asks, “Are you a double agent for MI6? Are you her asset?”

Villanelle remains silent. Her face unreadable. She’s thinking of all the ways to disarm Skinny and use his gun against him. There are footsteps drawing closer, but neither of them can hear them as the volume of their voices continue to rise as do the stakes.

“So if you’re not a double agent what is she to you? Is she your lover?” he teases. Villanelle flushes red.

”She is!” he says gleefully, but quick as lightning he turns cold and cruel. “Wait till Mikael and I get our hands on her!” His eyes are crazed as he fantasizes about torturing Eve. Villanelle suspects what he’s thinking and really wishes she had a gun. If anyone was going to hurt Eve it was going to be her.

“God! You were in trouble before, but this was supposed to put you back in the Twelve’s good graces, and now, we get to torture your lover and you will watch! Then we will just kill you!” His voice spiking with madness. Villanelle is burning with fury. She’s trapped without a gun and his pointed on her.

 

BANG!

 

Skinny topples over face first from the force of the bullet hitting him in the back of the skull. Behind him stands Eve with a gun in her hand.

Villanelle thinks she looks stunning. Her hair is wild from running and her eyes are wild from the kill. Villanelle feels electric as if she been hit by lightning. Every cell in her body is vibrating. She’s never felt this sort of rush before in any of her conquests, be it slaughter or sexual. Most of all, she can’t remember why she ever tried to stop thinking of Eve, why she wanted to avoid her. Villanelle’s blood is pumping so fast she can’t hear what Eve is shouting at her. She can see Eve’s lips moving, but all Villanelle can think about kissing her to make them move against hers. She thinks she would let Eve kill her, she’d let Eve do anything to her.

Eve slaps her. “Goddammit! I’ve been shouting at you to fucking run!”

“Fuck me! Kill me!” still reverberate through Villanelle’s brain, but the slap had done what Eve had intended, snapping Villanelle out of her daze. Eve tells her E Squadron could be there any minute and she needs to run.

Villanelle’s brain switches into overdrive thinking of ways to explain what just happened to whoever the Twelve will inevitably send to interrogate her. She is still standing in the same spot memorizing the scene and last few moments when Eve, who’s already shot the dead body again and is dragging it around to corroborate whatever story she’s decided to tell, shouts at her again to leave.

“Do you need any help?” Villanelle asks.

Eve drops the body with a dense ‘thunk’. Surprise colors her face. “Thanks, but no. I’ll be fine. You need to go.” And with that Villanelle disappears.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

PRESENT – EVE – LONDON

 

Eve had never looked forward to sleeping in her own bed more in her life than when she was dismissed after two days and nights of questioning by good cop and bad cop. Two nights sleeping sitting up in a hard-plastic chair was a form of torture. Her head was pounding and her back ached.

Walking into her apartment, she drops her bag on the couch and searches the refrigerator for a beer. Nothing, just some fruit and vegetables and…yogurt and…fresh eggs and…cheese.

“Hey wait!” Eve pulls her head out of the refrigerator and looks around her now fully furnished apartment. “What the-?” She looks back in the refrigerator at all the food Villanelle bought her too.

“Well, I guess she did go shopping in London.”

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

PRESENT – BARCELONA

 

Mikael, or Vik as Villanelle has named him, sips the black coffee he ordered and reads a local Barcelona newspaper waiting for the psychologist to arrive. He almost finishes his coffee, when the door chimes. Looking up, he sees the psychologist walking towards him.

“Sorry I’m late Mikael. It went longer than I thought.” He shrugs out of his jacket and sits down noticing the article Mikael is reading. “All these referendums are ridiculous yes?”

“Certainly has kept me busy. Are you late because she was being difficult?”

“No, on the contrary. She wouldn’t stop talking.”

“Do you think she was telling the truth about what happened in London?’

“Yes and no. She’s hiding something. She was oversharing to compensate. I think it would be in the organization’s best interest to keep a closer eye on her.”

“I agree, but I’ll need to send your recommendation up the ladder for approval before I can do anything about her. If that’s all, I need to get going.”

“No, that’s all. Oh! I typed up my thoughts about the session with Villanelle for you to include a physical copy in your report.”

“Thanks,” says Mikael taking the paper and leaving. “See you soon.”

“Of course, and your welcome. Bye.”


	5. Great, more dead bodies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even with a new job Villanelle is bored at least until Eve comes to investigate

GULF OF FINLAND

 

In a chateau on a private island off the coast of Finland, a group of men meet to discuss the rise of independence referendums throughout European countries, the possible dissolution of the European Union, and tariffs.

The morning session was dedicated to the dual threat of how independence referendums and a splintered EU would negatively impact trade and their business interests, which later in the afternoon, transitioned to discussing the immediate danger increased tariffs posed.

The weather had been stunning and the sea surrounding the private island had been calm right up until after dinner when the men had taken a break from their discussions. Now, as they regrouped to discuss sinister solutions to their collective problems, the sea had grown wild and dark, waves thrashing the shore. Storm clouds formed to the West and advanced with a fierce frigid wind. Almost as if nature could sense what was coming next. As if the world was attuned to this particular group of men.

The problems referendums and tariffs create are complex and partially intertwined, not easily solved with one solution. So they hear several potential solutions; a team of Russian misinformation hackers, a Catalonian separatist leader currently locked in a Belgium prison, one of the architects of Brexit advocating for a hard exit, an American ambassador who is Pro-Brexit and advocates for the dissolution of the EU and tariffs, and a member of the Chinese trade ministry.

For each target, the Twelve hear the specifics of why they were chosen and what could be achieved by their deaths. The men don’t vote until all the targets are explained in order to see the bigger picture that could be achieved. After hearing everything there is to say, there’s an hour-long discussion about whether all the marks need to be eliminated or a specific combination could achieve their desired outcome. Some of this discussion is also about altering a few of the targets.

Eventually, they vote. All twelve men get a pair of fish, one off-white and the other a brown-crimson. A bag is passed around and the men put a fish in, white or red, as each target is decided. After several rounds three targets are chosen. The Catalonian separatist, an attaché to the American ambassador, and five teams of Russian hackers. 

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

THREE MONTHS LATER

 

It's very early and she’s bored. Villanelle had anticipated this moment for three months and now that it’s here it's rather anticlimactic. She arrived at this particular stretch of road almost two hours ago, waiting for her mark to drive by, occasionally checking the GPS monitor tracking his Tesla to reassure herself she knows where he is. It’s been a long dull two hours.

If Villanelle were being honest, everything after London felt anticlimactic. Sometimes she would get an overwhelmingly intense feeling that something would be just around the corner. A tension that builds and builds only to collapse leaving behind a feeling of emptiness. In her boredom, Villanelle’s mind drifts to almost three months prior when she was handed the postcard for this job.

She had been satisfied at the time having just successfully manipulated her interrogator into believing her version of events in London. Her reward was a new job.

Back at her flat in Barcelona, she opened the email she knew would be waiting for her on her encrypted laptop and used the postal code to decrypt it. A series of pictures were attached and she decodes the documents about her new target, Pere Fournier, out of them. Villanelle prints the dossier to study, taking in every detail.

The documents indicated Fournier was being detained in a Belgium prison at the behest of the Spanish government for his part in the Catalan Independence referendum. He owned a Tesla Model 3 which caught Villanelle’s eye. He also had family on his mother’s side outside of Barcelona in Abrera. From these three facts, Villanelle put together a plan.

First, Pere Fournier would need to be freed from prison. She would ask her handler, Vik, to get him released. She would never go inside another prison ever again. Once freed, she suspected Fournier would visit his family. People were so predictable. Finally, she would hack his Tesla and drive him off the road on his way home from visiting his family.

Like Konstantin before him, Vik appeared in her kitchen almost a week later to discuss her plans. After some back and forth about possible weaknesses, they finally agreed on a revised version of Villanelle's original plan. Vik had been worried about the ability of Tesla engineers to recover data from the wreck. Villanelle had assured him nothing would be recovered. She also requested his help to close down all but the one road she scouted connecting Barcelona and Abrera.

Three months after Villanelle’s and Vik’s meeting, he was able to get Fournier freed and extradited to Spain. He arrived in Barcelona almost six hours ago and immediately went to see his family. Villanelle stalked him from the airport to his house and then to his mother’s family’s house. With Fournier busy in the company of his family, Villanelle went to the stretch of road where she would commandeer Fournier’s car. The road she chose to kill Fournier on was carved into the mountainside and overlooked a sheer cliff.

For three months a hacker employed by the Twelve coded a virus disguised as a Tesla update that could hack a Tesla Model 3 for her. Vik successfully convinced a few cities to take up public works projects on several roads effectively leaving only one road open between Barcelona and Abrera. Her time had come.

She was waiting for Fournier to leave Abrera and come within range so she could take control of his car with an app on her phone. Once under her control, she would accelerate the car off of the cliff where it would crash into the ground 40 meters below. Villanelle would have to climb down the cliffside to make sure Fournier was dead and the car caught on fire. If it hadn’t, she would sabotage the lithium batteries, making sure the fire affected the car’s hard drive to burn away any evidence of the virus. Simple. Easy. Very anticlimactic. Kind of boring.

So boring, Villanelle was distracted thinking about wild hair and wild eyes as her phone angrily beeped at her alerting her that Fournier was finally leaving. Ten minutes later, he was within range.

Villanelle could only imagine the fear and panic in his eyes as his car plunged over the cliff. She would have liked to have looked into his face when he realized he was going to die.

She could hear a large metallic crunch as the car hit the bottom of the ravine. Climbing down, Villanelle saw a small fire starting on the now upturned underside of the car. Its crushed remains reminded her of an accordion.

Villanelle walked over to the driver’s side, whipping out a knife. She checks to make sure Fournier is dead. He is. Taking one last look at the chaos she caused, she pierces his abdomen with her knife and disappears into the night.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

ONE WEEK LATER

 

BANG!

Eve bolts upright in bed, her breathing erratic. Since her shooting incident three months ago, a new nightmare has been added to her usual lineup. She dreams over and over again of killing the man she had followed after witnessing Konstantin's head exploding.

Trying to orient herself in the present and slow her heart rate down is a bit difficult in her recently redesigned bedroom. She can still remember the smell of gun smoke, the recoil, the sound of his body smacking into the floor, and the way Villanelle looked at her. No one had ever looked at her like that. As if Villanelle could see everything Eve was and everything Eve could be and Villanelle hadn’t looked away. Even Eve flinches when she looks too closely.

 

Thinking about what happened three months ago, Eve remembers the fear in the pit of her stomach as she slowly made her way up the building following the sound of two voices arguing. Her stomach lurched and she felt lightheaded at the rush of dopamine when she identified one of the voices as Villanelle’s. Her body reacts on a molecular level, as if every cell in her body sings, “Villanelle!” but her blood runs cold once she reminds herself she's alone with two assassins.

“One who defiantly wants to kill me,” remembers Eve.

She crawls up the stairs trying to stay out of sight to peek over the top step to see where Villanelle and Baldy are standing. She can see him directly in front of her twenty yards away but can’t immediately see Villanelle. While they’re distractedly arguing with each other, Eve sneaks over to the wall on her right to stay out of sight and decide her next move. She needs a plan.

Peering around the corner of her hiding spot to get a better look at where the two assassins are located, she finally sees Villanelle. The look on her face is not one Eve ever expected to see, nervousness. Eve pulls back behind the wall and forces herself to focus on what the two of them are saying over the sound of blood rushing in her ears.

Eve catches him asking “…your lover?”

“What are they talking about?” Eve thinks to herself in disbelief and confusion. “Who is Villanelle’s lover?” and making a disgusted face, “Not Konstantin?”

She hears the man excitedly exclaim, ”She is!”

“She?” mouths Eve. She realizes she doesn’t know what they’re talking about and needs to wait and listen.

Villanelle is silent. He sounds manic talking about whoever he plans on torturing. A split-second later Eve’s blood runs cold and she sees red when she hears him threaten to kill Villanelle. 

Eve is on autopilot, only one thought on her mind. Kill.

She whips out from behind the wall and pulls the trigger.

BANG!

He drops with a dull ‘smack’ on the concrete floor

The only thing Eve feels immediately after killing him is a cold fury. Fury that someone other than her would catch Villanelle. Fury that someone other than her would kill Villanelle. Fury that someone other than her would have Villanelle in any way. Villanelle was hers.

And Villanelle is looking at her, unblinking. Eve can actually feel Villanelle’s gaze physically slide down her body. It gives her goosebumps. She sees the excitement in Villanelles eyes. The desire and lust, blood and sex. Both excite and unnerve Eve.

Her fury fades and she realizes what’s she’s done. Eve feels like she’s going to vomit.

“Villanelle needs to disappear before E Squadron finds her here," thinks Eve. "And I've got to make this look like something other than what it is."

She yells at Villanelle to run, but Villanelle only stares are her with a predatory look, one of her hands covering the place Eve had stabbed her. Eve runs to Villanelle and slaps her.

“Fucking run!”

Villanelle blinks herself out of Eve’s spell.

“E Squadron is going to be here any second! You need to leave!”

Villanelle looks around as if trying to absorb every detail of what just happened as Eve drags Baldy under his armpits closer to the stairs and shoots him in the leg. Villanelle looks at Eve after hearing the gunshot. Eve thinks she sees pride and hunger in her look. She expects Villanelle to says something snarky or threatening to her, but Eve didn’t except Villanelle to offer her help. 

Eve remembers declining and then Villanelle disappearing.

 

“Why did she ask me if I needed help? What is she playing at?” Eve still doesn’t understand it, or maybe she doesn’t want to. She doesn’t want to know what Villanelle wants from her. She rubs her face in exhaustion and weariness.

Aside from the almost continuous nightmares, during the day, Eve thinks about the moment she killed him again and again. How her body went cold as he threated to kill Villanelle and then hot as she decided to kill him. Except, it wasn’t even a decision. It was an instinctive reflex, like breathing. She had to kill him. She had to, otherwise, he was going to kill Villanelle. Eve couldn’t have stopped herself and the impulse to kill him is what worries her most. Eve wanted to kill him and she doesn’t regret it.

In fact, remembering it excites Eve, especially the way Villanelle had looked at her after. She can feel her blood turn hot, her pulse thump, and her breath shudder, but before she crosses a line that can’t be uncrossed she takes a cold shower.

She could understand why Villanelle does what she does. The power Eve felt momentarily after her kill was all-consuming, intoxicating. She understands why a young woman whose mother died and whose father abandoned her in orphanages until he was murdered would be drawn to that rush of power to experiences any sense of control in her once uncontrollable life. Even if it meant being the personal assassin for an international secret organization.  

With a groan, Eve gets up to get ready for work. After three months, she still finds it unnerving to see her apartment fully furnished. Villanelle styled it exactly the way Eve would have if she had unlimited amounts of money. Simplistic bordering on minimalist. Mostly white and grey pieces with splashes of color in different shades of blue.

Eve couldn’t and still can’t decide if Villanelle’s “gift” had been a genuine gesture or if she was just trying to drive her crazy. As if Villanelle wasn’t doing that before without the now constant unavoidable reminder of her. What wasn’t completely insane about running towards Villanelle after Eve saw her blow Konstantin’s head off knowing full well getting closer would only make it easier for Villanelle to kill her. Normal people don’t run towards killers who want to kill them. On top of that, Eve killed a man and it really wasn't bothering her. How is all of that not completely insane?

Now, in her private living space, everywhere Eve looks is a reminder of Villanelle and it's driving her mad because the strangest part is Eve doesn’t hate it. It’s almost flattering. Having someone like Villanelle know her well enough to furnish her apartment in the exact way she would have. But it also makes Eve uneasy. She shouldn’t be flattered. She should be scared or at least nervous. What does it say about someone who is flattered by a serial killer’s attention? 

 

On her way to the abandoned pub, Eve stops to pick up a newspaper. She arrives before the other three and reads to pass the time. An article on the second page catches her attention.

'Catalonia Separatist Movement in Shambles After Leader Dies in Shocking Suicide'

Eve is still reading the article when Elena arrives.

“Oh, so you know!” Elena says, pointing to the front page of the paper.

“Know what?”

“Our new assignment. The American Ambassador to Germany’s attaché was murdered-er-died under suspicious circumstances. Carolyn wants to send us to Berlin to help the CIA and BfV investigate. She thinks it might have something to do with the Twelve,” Elena clarifies.

“No, I didn’t know. Carolyn doesn’t really speak to me after what happened.” After Konstantin’s assassination, Carolyn had been, somehow, even colder to Eve which suited her just fine. “Did she say when you were leaving?”

“Uh,” Elena says a little distracted putting her stuff down, “tonight.” She flashes Eve an awkward smile saying, “but I guess if you didn’t know that Carolyn didn’t want you knowing. Sorry. But I bet it’s just because of, well, you know, Bill. She probably didn’t want to open up old wounds.”

“Yeah, that’s probably the reason. Bill.”

A few minutes of silence go by.

“I-,” thinking it over, “I think I have another lead.” Eve continues, excited now, opening the paper to the second page, laying it down on the table for both of them to look at. “One of the leaders of the Catalan Independence movement died and it was ruled a suicide. But, according to Spanish intelligence, a pair of women’s footprints were reported near the scene of the crash.”

Elena gives her a troubled look, almost pity. By now she knows about Eve’s obsession and she finds it troubling in its intensity. Her and Kenny had tried joking with Eve, calling it ‘obsession boarding on love’ but the way Eve reacted wasn’t funny. Elena thought it was concerning. Eve blushed and was speechless then flustered trying to deny it and had remained silent for the rest of the day clearly shaken about what the two of them had said. And all day Elena noticed Eve doing this weird thing where she would put her hair up and take it down not a minute later.

“Do you think Carolyn will let you go?” Elena asks hoping Eve will take a hint.

“Maybe?” Eve shrugs, oblivious to Elena’s hint, “but she hasn’t really been talking to me. So I’ll ask and she won’t say anything, including no.”

Eve is back to reading the article and looking up a few details in shared intelligence databases. Before long Kenny and Carolyn walk in. Kenny gives Eve a shy, if not warm smile. Carolyn looks through her.

Bringing the four of them together, Carolyn discusses her and Elena’s upcoming trip to Berlin. She explains that the attaché, Paul McDonald, to the American ambassador to Germany was found dead under suspicious circumstances. The coroner in Berlin determined he died by autoerotic asphyxiation, but by all accounts, he had no such predilections. There was also the curious similarity between his death and Fat Panda’s and a report about a suspicious delivery man. Both the CIA and BfV are investigating and Carolyn’s contacts in both agencies requested her help. She and Elena would leave that night.

When Carolyn had finished, Eve asks her if she could investigate a lead outside of Barcelona. Eve tells her, “One of the leaders of the Catalan Independence movement committed suicide, but some of the details are inconsistent,” and, as if an afterthought, she adds, “there were reports of women’s footprints at the scene.”

Carolyn glances just above Eve’s head and says, “Hmm, Kenny has to stay,” and then promptly leaves with Elena following behind.

“So you and Mum are getting on better I see,” remarks Kenny.

Eve snorts. “I guess. She didn’t tell me I couldn’t go.” Eve books a ticket for a flight to Barcelona for later the same day.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

It’s eleven in the afternoon when Villanelle hears her phone vibrate. She has to untangle herself from a black-haired woman before leaping off the bed to search her discarded pants pocket for the vibrating phone.

“Hello?” Villanelle answers a little out of breath.

“MI6 is sending an agent to Barcelona to investigate Pere Fournier’s suicide,” says Vik. “We want you to stay in Barcelona and watch whoever they send. Identify, surveil, and clone any electronic devices the agent is sure to bring with them. We need to know how much MI6 knows.“

He hangs up after telling her the agent’s flight number and Villanelle’s phone vibrates with the arrival of an encrypted email containing the passenger manifest. Villanelle doesn’t need it. She knows who’s coming and she’s floating on air. High on the thought of Eve in the same city as her, coming to admire her work. She dresses, completely forgetting about the naked woman on the bed who is calling after her as she vanishes out the door of the woman’s hotel room.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

It's late when Eve gets off the plane, carry-on luggage in hand (she’s never leaving it out of sight ever again), unaware she's being watched as she waves for a taxi outside the airport. Despite the cold shoulder recently, Carolyn had Kenny forward the name and number of an agent in the Spanish Domestic Intelligence Agency, DNS, for Eve to contact when she arrived. In the taxi on the way to her hotel, Eve calls to set up a meeting with Carolyn’s contact, DNS agent Valeria Olivas. The two agree to meet the following morning at the morgue.

“Great,” sulks Eve in resignation, “more dead bodies.”

 

Ever since London every time Villanelle even so much as thought of Eve her brain sort of did a stutter step, as if Eve was too much for her to handle.

Now, seeing Eve in person as Villanelle watched from underneath a long black wig reminiscent of Morticia Addams and behind large dark sunglasses, its like time was moving too quickly and to slowly all at once. Dispite her excitement, only her eyes move across the airport lobby watching Eve make her way outside to the arrival gate and flag down a taxi like a lioness hunting prey from tall grasses on the savanna. 

With Eve out of sight, Villanelle hops off the bench she was sitting on to make her way outside and hijacks a taxi someone else already had waiting. She instructs the driver to follow Eve.

 

Eve gets to the hotel and the front desk is empty. She taps the service bell but no one seems to hear.

“Hello? Do I check myself in?” and as Eve says this a teenage boy stumbles out of the backroom behind the front desk tucking his shirt in to assist her.

 

Villanelle orders the driver to park around the corner of the hotel Eve’s taxi dropped her off at. She tells him to wait. She’ll only be five minutes. Walking around the corner to the front of the hotel still in her disguise, she peers through the window seeing Eve grow irritated at the poor service and eventually receive a keycard. Villanelle watches Eve walk to a bank of elevators that will take her up to her room. That’s all the confirmation Villanelle needed. She walks back around the hotel to her taxi and has him drop her off a block from her building.

 

In her flat, laying on her bed, she thinks about Eve alone in her hotel room. What could she be doing? Unpacking? Sleeping? Taking care of some last-minute work? Changing her clothes? Showering? What was she thinking about? Me? Villanelle can feel herself burning up, the urge to touch overwhelming.

“Ugh!” Villanelle gets up, slightly irritated at herself for feeling like she needs to touch Eve or she’ll crumble into a million pieces. She disguises herself with a wig and a baseball cap before running five miles to Eve’s hotel trying to burn off her built up heat.

 

It's early morning, too early for anyone to be awake, almost 2 am, and the teenage boy who is supposed to be manning the front desk is nowhere to be seen. Villanelle slips behind to search the hotel’s computer for Eve’s room number, 208, and codes a previously blank card with access. She takes the stairs up to the second floor and walks down the hall feeling the anticipation and need build up again. Her breathing is shallow, but it’s not from running.

Stopping in front of room 208, heart pounding in her ears, Villanelle stares at the door not quite knowing what she wants to happen. She places her right hand on the door and her left hand over their scar then leans to press an ear against it, listening for Eve. The hotel’s air conditioning is too loud for her to hear anything.

Villanelle holds her breath as she slips the keycard into the door, remembering how Eve had slipped the knife into her and holds it there, her heart pounding. The moment drags on as she thinks of the possibilities. Death or sex wait for her behind Eve’s door. She thinks of London and what she had seen in Eve’s eyes after Eve saved her. Death and sex.

Suddenly, the elevator down the hall pings announcing its arrival to the second floor. Villanelle’s head snaps in its direction. She whips the card out, sips down the stairs, and fades into the night before the elevator’s doors open to let an oblivious drunk couple spill out into the hallway.

 

Eve opens her eyes to the bright glare of the hotel alarm clock telling her it's only 2:03 am. She had been dreaming about Villanelle again. This dream was different though. It was a rare one for her to dream. Not a nightmare, more like a wish. She dreamt she was in Villanelle’s bed in Paris. It was the moment right before she had stabbed her. The tipping point where she hadn’t decided whether she was actually going to stab Villanelle or not. She can still feel Villanelle’s hand running through her hair and caressing her cheek. Still feels her piercing look searching her face. Feels the bed shift as Villanelle leans in close…and then Eve woke up.

She lays there, eyes open, thinking about the look in Villanelle’s eyes. It had been excitement, but, and Eve now realizes this, because Villanelle had thought Eve was surrendering to her. Villanelle had thought she had won their cat and mouse game only to be sorely disappointed when Eve snatched her victory away from her at the last second.

Eve compares it to the gaze Villanelle gave her in London after she shot the other assassin. It was so much more than the look in Paris. In Paris it was greedy, as if Villanelle was going to take everything from her. That look in London though, thinks Eve, she could have asked Villanelle to do anything and she would have. Villanelle would have given her everything. But what could a serial killer give her that she could possibly want? Eve’s mind wonders on that thought before arriving somewhere she only goes in her dreams. A place where they both give and take.

PING!

She jerks up in bed suddenly hearing a noise outside her door. Eve grabs her gun from on top of the desk in the corner and walks down the hall in her room to the door with her heart in her throat. She can't see anyone out of the peephole. As she opens the door with her gun cautiously at her side, a giggling drunk couple stumbles past her. Eve gives them a sleepy nod hiding the gun behind her back.

“I’m going crazy,” she tells herself as she slips back into bed and falls asleep.

 

The next morning. Villanelle is lying in wait in the hotel convenience store wearing a curly shoulder-length dark brunette wig and baseball cap pretending to try on cheap sunglass. She’s actually using the mirrors to watch the entrance of the hotel behind her. The hair on the nape of her neck stands up when she sees Eve walk across the foyer and out the front door. Giving herself enough time to remain unnoticed, Villanelle stalks after her.

She follows Eve to the local morgue and heads into a bakery across the street to watch her undetected. A couple of minutes pass before a rather tall, pear-shaped woman greets Eve at the front door. After some conversation, Villanelle watches as the woman ushers Eve inside the building.

 

“Thanks for meeting me, agent Olivas. I just want your opinion on some contradicting evidence in your report and I thought it was best we did this in person,” Eve says walking down the steps to the morgue’s basement. What Eve leaves unsaid is that she doesn't want to leave a paper or electronic trail.

“Please, call me Valeria. Carolyn called the other day and said you might share some of my apprehensions about calling Mr. Fournier’s death a suicide. I’m sure you must have noticed the detail about women’s footprints at the scene?”

“Yes, that was actually what I wanted to talk to you about. You’re sure the footprints are related to Fournier’s death?”

“Yes. The ravine the car crashed in is dirt and gravel, mostly dirt, making it easy for us to track her from the side of the road to the bottom of the ravine and back up again.”

“How do you know it wasn’t someone trying to offer help? And how do you know it was a woman?”

“Well, to answer your first question, no one called 1-1-2. And second, as you can read in the report the foot prints are size 36. Very small for a man.”

The two women continue walking down the stairs into the basement. The coroner, Dr. Antoni Reus, tells Eve that Fournier essentially died on impact. The force of the crash snapped Fournier’s spinal cord between C-4 and C-6 causing paralysis of his motor functions and resulting in suffocation which caused his death. He adds that it was further accelerated by the severe internal bleeding from the blunt force trauma. Dr. Rues also mentions a stab wound found on Fournier’s burned body. 

“Where?” But Eve already knows where.

“Lower left abdomen,” answers Dr. Reus.

“His stab wound is not the only strange thing. First, Fournier just got out of prison and was driving back to his house after seeing his family, who described him as extremely happy. Second, his seatbelt was still on. Third, he snapped the emergency break trying to wrench it up. And, of course, the most inconsistent piece of evidence, he appears to have been stabbed shortly after the crash, which is interesting due to the female footprints at the crash site near the driver’s door,” recites Agent Olivas.

“And it was still ruled a suicide?”

Valeria tells Eve that Fournier’s death was officially ruled a suicide because pressure from higher-ups forced her to drop it.

Eve asks to see the stab wound and Dr. Reus shows her pictures of it on the computer. He explains that the family wanted a quick funeral and opted for cremation. The stab wound is obvious even for the condition the body appears to be in, mutilated from the crash and scorched by the proceeding fire. Eve almost caresses the wound in the picture on the computer monitor, then pulls her fingers away as if burned, remembering where she is and who she’s with. She asks for copies of Fournier’s autopsy, which Dr. Reus is happy to do, and Eve and Valeria leave to visit the scene of the crash.

 

Arriving at the crash site, both women wait to let a taxi go by before getting out of the car. Neither of them notices it slowly turn the corner to pull off to the side of the road out of sight.

Avoiding the caution tape barrier substituting for the metal barrier destroyed by Fournier’s Tesla, they look over the edge. The impact site is too far below for Eve to get a feel for what happened.

“Do you think I could get a closer look?”

Valeria looks at her and then at Eve’s shoes and says, ”Yes, but it’s going to be difficult for you in those flats.”

“I’ll make due,” and the two of them slowly make their way down the shallower side of the road. There’s not much to see at the bottom either, just some deep cuts into the earth where the car landed. They hike back up and drive to the evidence warehouse where the damaged Tesla is being stored. Neither realizes the taxi that had passed earlier trailing them again.

 

The evidence warehouse smells faintly like pork and burnt plastic. The damaged Tesla is laying in the middle. The DNS agent in charge of evidence collection, Llora Serra, asks Eve to put on a clean suit so she doesn’t contaminate anything.

Eve slowly walks around the car picturing herself in Villanelle’s shoes. She imagines the light cast by the battery fire dancing across Villanelle face, the way it would twist and distort her sharp features. She imagines the pleasure Villanelle would feel at seeing the chaos before her. The chaos she had created, like a raging storm, with her, calm, at the center in complete control. Eve peers inside the driver’s seat and can imagine the weight of the knife in Villanelle’s hand and the way it would slide into Fournier’s body. She remembers the slight resistance at first but then the glide of the knife’s edges as it penetrates her flesh.

“Would you like to see the damaged hard drive?” Valeria asks her and Eve snaps out of whatever headspace she was in.

“What has Tesla said about the crash? Were they able to get any data from the hard drive?” Eve inquires when she walks over to them.

“They have been less than helpful but jumped at the opportunity to rule it a suicide. And they were unable to recover any data from the car’s hard drive saying it was too badly damaged by the fire,” says Llora.

“I know a guy who’s pretty good with computer stuff who might be able to help. Do you mind if I take it with me?”

“Officially, I can’t let you do that, but I need a cup of coffee and I think Llora does too. Right Llora?”

“Yes, I am suddenly very thirsty.”

They’re gone and Eve slips the hard drive into her bag.

 

Before Eve had left the evidence warehouse, Valeria and Llora invited her to dinner. The two women, Eve soon learns when they arrive together to pick her up from the hotel, are close friends. In the car, they tell Eve about growing up to together and then going to separate universities to pursue different degrees which eventually led them to careers in similar fields.

At dinner, Valeria and Llora tell her about cases they worked on together when they were both still with the police force before Valeria joined the DNS, later to be followed by Llora.

“It’s nice to have a partner in such a male-dominated career,” remarks Eve at dinner. “Elena and I are the same way. Each of us tries to have the other's back.” 

“Oh!” says Llora excitedly. “You work with your wife too?”

Eve chokes on the wine she had been drinking and Valeria and Llora give each other confused looks. “I’m sorry what?” asks Eve.

“I thought you said-you said you worked with your partner,” explains Llora.

“Oh, no, I just-Elena and I aren’t gay-I just meant my friend, Elena. Elena, my work partner. Who is my friend. Just friends. It’s-It’s nice that we are both women who work together.”

“I am sorry. I did not mean to suggest or assume anything.”

Apologetic and sheepish, “No, it’s fine. I just wasn’t-I didn’t mean to offend you with my reaction. I just wasn’t expecting it is all,” and dinner resumes with Eve a little preoccupied.

 

Hiding out of sight in the shadow of a doorway across the street from the restaurant Eve and the two agents are having dinner at, Villanelle can see Eve through the restaurant’s window turning red as she chokes on her wine and waves her hands around in defensive and then apologetic motions. The two agents across from her look confused, but the moment passes and dinner resumes as whatever was said to cause the disruption is forgotten.

 

Eve returns to her hotel later than she would have liked (her flight back to London is early the next morning). She takes the elevator up to the second floor and keys herself into her room. She’s desperate for a shower and still needs to pack. Walking into the bathroom and turning on the shower, Eve thinks a shower is probably the best plan.

 

Villanelle waits outside of Eve hotel for ten minutes. Enough time for Eve to make it up to her room without a chance of spotting Villanelle skulking after her. Eve’s dinner went late and there is no one manning the front desk again. With her bag of cloning devices, she takes the stairs to the second floor. Pausing outside of Eve’s room, she has to steady herself. Remind herself to say focused. Don’t get distracted. Just clone Eve's electronics and leave.

Villanelle can hear the sound of Eve turning on the shower through the door. It’s good it’s so lateand most people are asleep, because Villanelle waits five minutes in the hotel's second-floor hallway, enough time she supposes for Eve to actually be in the shower. 

It’s not exactly nervousness she feels as she slides the keycard in the door for a second time, more like excitement. The kind of excitement Villanelle feels before a kill, yet she knows she’s not here to kill Eve.

Turning the door handle slowly to minimize noise, her heart rate spikes. She’s seen Eve naked once and fantasized about it hundreds of times, often while touching herself, but to have Eve naked in the same room as her now is overwhelming. It’s almost hard to remember why she’s in here in the first place. 

Stopping in the room’s hallway, Villanelle can see Eve’s laptop and phone ten feet directly in front of her on the desk. Walking out of the hallway looking to her left into the bathroom, as if pulled towards Eve like a magnet. She can see steam rising up above the shower curtain beginning to fog the mirror. Villanelle stares for a minute, only giving herself this much of Eve before she does what she has to do and slip away. Villanelle takes another step out of the hallway and hears the soft ‘CLICK’ of a gun’s safety being flicked off. 


	6. Weirder than usual

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eve makes some connections and Villanelle makes some decisions

Eve first noticed Villanelle following her as she was leaving the restaurant with Valeria and Llora. She happened to turn around before getting into their back seat to see Villanelle creep from a darkened doorway into another taxi which was now tailing them through Barcelona. Eve suspected Villanelle had probably been pursuing her as soon as her plane landed the day before. She should have known better.

She was quiet in the backseat thinking about her shadow as the two DNS agents drove her back to her hotel. First admonishing herself for only now noticing Villanelle and second, trying to think of a plan. Valeria and Llora interpreted Eve’s silence as a result of their misunderstanding at dinner which made their goodbyes rather awkward as they dropped Eve off.

Walking through the hotel lobby up to her room, Eve saw only two outcomes of Villanelle shadowing her. One, Villanelle was only keeping tabs on her, like in Berlin. Or two, Villanelle was going to make contact, like what happened to Bill in Berlin. Though, neither of those options felt quite right. Mostly because every week since seeing each other face to face in London Villanelle had been sending her untraceable postcards and letters written in French. Eve had a very good idea about what was written on them. She'd seen Anna's collection in Moscow and had known then what it meant. But she and Villanelle don't have that kind of relationship. Eve had stabbed her. Villanelle should want to and should be trying to kill her. So, obviously, their relationship wasn't like Anna's and Oksana's. It's different, or at least that's what Eve tells herself.

She kept all of Villanelle's postcards and letters hidden in a shoebox under her bed, untranslated and unread. Opting for ignorance. Trying to keep some distance between her and Villanelle. Trying to keep their relationship purely professional. Trying to put up barriers, plausible deniability. She never mentioned receiving them to anyone. If she told someone then she would have to deal with whatever Villanelle had written to her.

But maybe if she had read them, Eve could have been better prepared for Villanelle in Barcelona right now.

So, entering her hotel room, Eve sets her trap. She threw her clothes and toiletries into her suitcase, turned on the shower, and waited just out of sight around the corner of the hallway leading deeper into her room with her gun drawn.

 

The card reader on the door beeps. The door handle clicks open then closed. Eve’s heart is beating so loudly she wonders if it’s going to betray her. Villanelle’s shadow slowly slides into view as she makes her way down the hallway and Eve thinks she might be having a heart attack.

Then Villanelle is there. Not noticing Eve because she's looking over her left shoulder into the bathroom where she thinks Eve is when Eve is to her right thinking her body might be exploding at being so near to Villanelle. Everything is so overwhelming and immense Eve’s not even sure she’s breathing.

She clicks the safety off. Villanelle head snaps to the right, eyes wide in surprise at seeing Eve out of the shower. Despite Eve pointing a gun at her, Villanelle smiles at Eve's deception, impressed.

Eve feels as if the ground beneath her shifts. As if she’s both gained and lost a part of herself. Villanelle’s look makes her feel naked and raw. Villanelle looks at her and she feels like she’s been stripped of all her defenses and disguises. Villanelle looks at her and Eve feels like she’s looking in a mirror, seeing all the things she tries to deny in herself reflected in Villanelle’s eyes.

The sound of Villanelle’s bag hitting the floor breaks Eve's stupor. Still pointing the gun at her, Eve takes a step forward causing Villanelle’s smile to falter as she takes a step back. Eve continues to advance, gun drawn, as Villanelle, who is suddenly unsure about how this situation between them will play out, retreats, bumping into the wall behind her.

Pinned to the wall, Villanelle is as close to Eve now as she was lying next to Eve in her bed all those month ago. Villanelle gulps as she searches Eve’s face for any understanding about what's about to happen. Death or sex, Villanelle can’t bring herself to care which at the hands of Eve, but she definitely has a preference. She’ll gladly take whatever Eve gives her and she’ll gladly give everything to Eve.

Eve presses the muzzle of her gun into Villanelle’s sternum until it’s just Eve’s gun separating them. She's pushing the muzzle into her so hard Villanelle knows there will be a bruise later.

They stare at each other, breathing heavily as if they had just been fighting. As if that isn’t exactly what this is.

They're close enough now that Villanelle can feel the heat radiating off of Eve. Villanelle is so close she can smell her perfume on Eve. She thinks Eve wants this, wants her, the way her body is pressed up against hers, but Eve is so hesitant with fury in her eyes and conflict on her face.

This is the tipping point. They can both feel it, whatever’s going on between them. Like the moment Eve pressed the knife to Villanelle, but before she stabbed her. Death or sex. Villanelle is determined to tip this moment toward the latter and does something she swore she’d never do again, she lets her defenses down.

She asks Eve to kiss her. “Please,” she begs.

The only indication Eve heard her is the slight reduction of pressure on her sternum, though Eve’s face is unaltered by her pleas. She can’t see the inner war raging inside Eve’s head. The conflict between who Eve is versus who she tries to be. Kissing Villanelle, accepting Villanelle, would be tantamount to accepting all of her dark urges. The ones Eve tries so desperately to deny.

Eve wants Villanelle but she doesn’t want to want Villanelle. Wants to kiss her deeply. Wants to unbutton her pants and slip her hand low. Wants to feel Villanelle wet on her fingers. Wants to hear Villanelle moan her name into her neck as Eve’s attentions become too much. Wants to feel Villanelle’s hand clawing at her back and her hot panting breath on her as Villanelle comes.

Thinking of everything she wants, Eve’s eyes grow hungry but are still tainted by her conflict. Oksana reaches out to tuck a piece of Eve’s hair behind her ear, hoping to dissolve whatever hesitancy is left in Eve. Eve's eyes flutter closed, dizzy under Oksana's touch. Eve drops her last defense and lowers her gun. With her hand on Eve’s neck, Oksana pulls herself slowly off the wall she’s still backed into to kiss Eve.

Eve feels Villanelle shift towards her. So close now Eve can feel her breath on her lips. The sensation snaps her out of Oksana’s spell. Eve takes a stumbling step back putting distance between her and whatever succession of bad decisions she was going to make. She can’t look at Villanelle anymore, afraid of what she might do, choices she might make.

Oksana looks at her, baffled, a little hurt by the sudden distance between them. She waits, thinking maybe Eve just needs a little more time to accept this, accept them. Instead, Eve backs up even further and sits on the edge of the bed with her head in her hands. Oksana is statue still, afraid any movement will scare Eve off. They’re both silent for several minutes and Oksana thinks Eve may have forgotten she’s even in the room.

“Eve?” Oksana asks softly.

Oksana says her name asking so much of her, wanting so much of her, begging for so much of her.

And Eve hears all those things in her name coming from Oksana’s lips. But it scares her. What Oksana and Villanelle want from her scares her.

“Eve? Eve, look at me.” Eve looks at her laptop and phone on the desk then to her suitcase in the corner instead. She moves to collect them and Oksana grabs her wrist, stilling her for a moment. She can feel Eve’s erratic pulse.

“Eve.”

Eve shakes her off, collects her things, and darts out of the room without another look. 

Eve leaves and Oksana is alone. Eve leaves and an inhuman noise escapes Oksana’s lips. Eve leaves and Oksana feels like this time Eve has killed her. Cut open her chest and ripped out her heart.

This is worse than being stabbed. Death or Sex and Eve chose death, at least for Oksana.

Five minutes later, Villanelle closes the door to Eve’s hotel room, leaving the shower running and the last of Oksana behind.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

“Yes, I know, I shouldn’t have left without checking out, bu-…I’m sorry, what?...The shower? I-left-it-running? Right! I left it running! I-uh-I had a family emergency and I needed to leave right away...Well, your son wasn’t at the front desk so I just left! And then I forgot to call about checking out. Just put whatever charges you need to on the credit card you have on file under my name…Yes, Eve Park…Thank you, and sorry about the shower.”

Eve hangs up looking over to Kenny who is staring at her.

“That’s-what was that about?”

“Uuh, just some hotel stuff…from when I was in Barcelona.” Trying to distract Kenny, “Do you have anything from the hard drive yet?”

“Not yet." Checking his watch, "It's only been a few hours and it's pretty badly damaged. Even if I can recover anything, the data itself is going to be damaged too.” He looks back to his computer watching the progress bar for the hard drive’s data restoration.

Taking a minute to think about Eve’s weird conversation, “What did you mean when you said you left the shower running? Why did you leave your shower running when you left your hotel yesterday?”

“What?” catching Eve off guard. “Oh, uh, I just wanted to get back here right away, because of-of the-the hard drive,” says Eve stumbling through her lie, “and must have left it running.” After fleeing her hotel, Eve booked the soonest flight she could back to London, canceling her flight for this morning.

The bell attached to the pub's front door chimes announcing an arrival. Back from Berlin, Elena and Carolyn save Eve from fabricating another flimsy excuse to prop up her transparently shitty lie.

“How was Berlin?” ask Kenny

“Hectic, but we did get some interesting stuff,” says Elena.

“Oh?” wonders Eve aloud as Elena sits next to her at the card table and Carolyn looks over Kenny’s shoulder at the recovering hard drive. Elena takes some files from her bag, passing them to Eve for her to read.

Elena asks, “How was Barcelona? Was it her?”

“Hmm?” Eve hums asking for clarification, but really stalling so her voice doesn’t sound weird when she answers.

“Fournier’s suicide. Was it really a suicide or did Villanelle kill him?”

As nonchalantly as she can possibly muster, “Um, yeah I think so. Agent Olivas thinks there was foul play too, but pressure from her bosses got her to officially rule his death a suicide.”

Eve explains all the pieces of evidence inconsistent with suicide. The seat belt, what his family said about Fournier being happy, the broken emergency brake, “…and, uh, he was stabbed at the bottom of the ravine where his car crashed after he died,” she finishes.

Carolyn and Kenny, who were focused on his computer, turn their heads to Eve. Elena’s eyes widen in shock.

“You didn’t tell me he was stabbed,” says Kenny.

“I was waiting for everyone.” Eve didn’t want to have to see their concerned faces and worried looks more than once.

“Where?” asks Carolyn, but everyone already knows where.

“Lower left abdomen…She-,” Eve sighs before continuing. “It was obviously a message to me. A calling card? Maybe she just wanted to make sure I came to Barcelona to investigate? I don’t know. I don’t know what she wants from me,” she confesses quietly. She can’t meet any of their eyes.

“At least you got the hard drive,” remarks Carolyn diplomatically.

Eve looks up at Carolyn who’s finally looking at her and not through her. Eve thinks back to their time in Russia when Carolyn had said, “We love the people we like the least” and a small shiver slides down Eve’s spine. She thinks Carolyn might suspect what’s going on between her and Villanelle.

“So,” Elena ventures through the weird atmosphere of Eve’s confession, “did you get anything off it?”

“I was just telling Eve, before the two of you came in, that it’s going to take a while and if we do get anything the data is probably going to be corrupted.”

“Bummer. Eve let me know what you think about McDonald’s murder. I have some ideas, but yours are usually better.”

Eve hands a copy of her report on Fournier's murder to Carolyn and Elena. She left out the part about seeing Villanelle. The three of them read in silence for the next few hours, occasionally asking a question or two for clarification.

They finish reading each other reports around the same time.

“So,” says Carolyn steepling her hands, “I agree with you, Eve. I believe it was Villanelle who orchestrated Pere Fournier’s death, but how does this get us closer to identifying who the Twelve are? They are our goal.” The last sentence discreetly directed at Eve.

“How are Villanelle’s computer skills do you think? Your report mentioned that agent Serra speculated Fournier's Tesla could have been hacked,” asks Elena

Eve, the resident Villanelle expert says calculatedly because she’s already reached this conclusion, “I couldn’t say for sure, but I don’t think she’s capable of writing a bug to hack a Tesla, at least not on her own. She’s smart, but learning to code takes time and at most, she’s only had maybe three years to learn while training to be an elite international assassin. I don’t see her learning to code in her limited free time.”

“So someone else made the bug for her to use. We can work with that. The hacker is most likely a known entity in the criminal world if the Twelve hired them, or, like Villanelle, is possibly the Twelve’s personal hacker. Either way, they started somewhere and are probably on a government watch list. That’s where we’ll start once the data from the hard drive is recovered. What did you think of Berlin, Eve?” asks Carolyn

“The backdoor meetings the attaché, Paul McDonald, was engaged in were with Italy, Greece, Finland, and Poland? Why those? I have a few thoughts but it’s not in either of your notes.”

Elena looks to Carolyn before telling Eve that the CIA refused to verify the meetings took place even though the aids from the countries that McDonald met with confirmed they happened.

“Did they say what they were about?”

With a little disgust on her face, Elena says, “About raising tariffs on German and French imports and leaving the EU.”

“That’s-That’s bordering on sedition,” says Eve, clearly shocked. “Is that why he was murdered? Did the Twelve do this? McDonald’s murder doesn’t feel like it was her, and his doorman, who you interviewed, says he saw a suspicious delivery man. Could the delivery guy be a prostitute who accidentally killed McDonald while they were-uh-involved?”

Kenny makes an uncomfortable face.

“Based on local police knowledge and databases they use to keep track of known local sex workers, neither Elena or I believe he was a prostitute. The delivery man may just be a delivery man. He might even be an assassin who’s not affiliated with the Twelve, but we believe, as do the CIA and BfV, McDonald was murdered, despite the apparent evidence, because of his unofficial discussions.”

“This sounds-,” says Eve suddenly jumping up from the table to walk behind the bar and look through the copies of her investigative notes she brought from home.

Rummaging through one box, and not finding what she was looking for, searches a second until she finds the three kills Villanelle removed from her wall.

“McDonalds’s murder, once we started talking about the delivery guy, sounded familiar.”

She opens up the manila folder of the three non-Villanelle murders.

“When Villanelle returned my scarf she also took three murders off of the walls in my study. At the time I thought she was telling me she didn’t do it. I think I was right. Three journalists, one Norwegian and two Finnish, were all found dead of autoerotic asphyxiation within two days of each other. All three of them recently had written articles about Cyryl Laine’s connections detailed the Panama Papers. Their articles remained unpublished after their deaths.”

“Cyryl Laine? The Cyryl Laine? Nadia’s Cyryl Laine?” Elena asks a little hurt.

“Yeah,” Eve confesses sheepishly to Elena knowing full Elena remembers her lying to her all those months ago, “from the note Nadia left me.”

“Perfect!” says Carolyn getting up from the table, oblivious to the slight tension between Eve and Elena. “The three of you follow this new lead on Cyryl Laine. I have a hunch the Fournier murder is related to McDonald’s. A separatist leader and an American ambassador's attaché advocating for the dissolution of established governments both murdered but made to look like accidents within a week of each other. It’s too coincidental.” And with that Carolyn is out the door.

The three of them, Elena, Kenny, and Eve, look at each other for a moment and then get to work.

“Kenny, can you pull whatever you can find on Cyryl Laine from anywhere you can? Particularly anything that even hints at criminal activity? And police reports and autopsies on the three murders Villanelle denied doing?”

“Yeah, no problem Eve,” and Kenny starts searching for documents while the hard drive recovers.

Eve turns to Elena, “Sorry. I didn’t want to lie to you, but I wasn’t sure if I was even coming back when I saw you guys again. And then, well, everything happened with Konstantin and I forgot. I really am sorry. I don’t like lying to you.”

Taking a second to absorb Eve’s apology, “Yeah, I get it.” And jokingly but still serious, “Don’t ever do it again.”

Elena smiles at Eve and Eve smiles back. With the air between them cleared, they begin investigating Cyryl Laine.

 

For three days Eve and Elena scour the documents Kenny found on Laine. Eve called the journalists’ editors asking them for a copy of the unpublished articles they were working on before being murdered. By cross-referencing the articles and documents Kenny found with the Panama Papers the three journalists cited in their unpublished work, an interesting picture of Cyryl Laine started to develop.

The Norwegian journalist discovered that Laine owned almost fifty offshore shell corporations all related to transport and distribution companies making up almost 49% of the shipping businesses in Europe. He owned close to a thousand UPS, FedEx, and DHL franchises. He owned land used by railway and trucking companies along with several hundred airfields, shipping ports, and distribution warehouses. He was also the owner of every Scandinavian and Baltic freight shipping company currently in operation. Of course, all of Cyryl Laine's assets were owned under different names, but the Norwegian journalist discovered their real owner from the Panama Papers. What’s more, it's public information that Laine is currently on the board of several other shipping companies, solidifying his empire of transporting goods throughout and into and out of Europe.

The two Finnish journalists, who were working together, uncovered a darker side to Laine’s enterprises. According to several of their anonymous sources, Laine was also involved in drug and human trafficking, especially when the migrant crisis reached its peak.

The documents Kenny acquired for them included several Eve already read but also included autopsy reports she wasn’t able to trick people into giving her when she was doing her research independently. The autopsies ruled all three journalists’ deaths accidental caused by autoerotic asphyxiation. The other reports Kenny gathered were about Laine’s competitors and past business partners dying under somewhat mysterious circumstances, including a handful who all recently died of autoerotic asphyxiation.

The police reports for several of Laine’s competitors’ deaths seem incomplete as if officers were forced to shut down their investigations. Some of the reports included accounts from witnesses seeing a muscular Scandinavian man close to the time of the victims’ deaths sneaking around their places of residence.

A notable pattern began to emerge, one in which it was obvious Laine’s business empire was built on death. The Twelve would send a contract killer, a tall muscular man of Scandinavian origin, to help Laine maintain his stranglehold on his shipping empire. 

They relayed this to Carolyn when she came by on the third day after hearing the hard drive’s data had been recovered and partially restored.

“So,” she begins, “we have another assassin operating in Europe, most likely at the behest of the Twelve, linked to murders committed in the interest of one of their possible members.”

“We think so,” says Elena.

“And what did you recover from the hard drive, Kenny?”

“Ah, not much, but what was recovered is very interesting. Most of the recovered data was normal Tesla software, but one thing I did find was an interesting few lines of code, most likely belonging to whoever wrote the bug to hack the Tesla.”

“And?” asks Carolyn

“And,” continues Kenny with a sly smile, “it’s a signature of a hacker known to MI6, a Neil Heikkinen, but he goes by the pseudonym LaZo. He’s based in Finland.”

Carolyn’s eyebrows shoot up. Eve and Elena already heard what Kenny found, so they wait patiently for Carolyn to decide what to with the information all three of them just relayed to her.

She finally says, “Awfully coincidental. Laine, who’s from Finland. A hacker who wrote the code to murder Fournier, from Finland. Another assassin who’s murdered for Laine, including McDonald, of Scandinavian origin.” Carolyn pauses to look around at the three of them before saying, “I think we need to go to Finland.”

 

It’s just Elena and Eve in the pub as they pack up the office readying for their flight to Finland tomorrow morning. Kenny and Carolyn left together almost a half hour earlier.

Elena suddenly stops and ponders Eve. “You’ve been weird since Barcelona. Weirder than usual.”

“No, I haven’t. I’m the same level of weird I always am,” replies Eve packing up her bag to avoid Elena's knowing look.

“You just told me you weren’t going to lie to me anymore.”

Eve stops pretending to pack, sighs as she sits back in her chair in resignation, and removes her hair tie to let her hair down.

“Fine! You’re right! Ugh! God!” With her face in her hands, Eve mumbles, “I almost fucked her.”

“What?”

Louder now, looking at Elena, “I almost fucked her! Villanelle! She was still in Barcelona when I was there and she broke into my hotel room, but I knew she was coming and I don’t know, there was-there was a weird tension and it felt like-like when you’re in a cab with someone you just met at a bar and you’re on your way to their place and you both know what’s going to happen next.”

“Oh!” says a shocked Elena as she slips into the chair next to Eve. “I thought your obsession with serial killers was more a professional interest than a sexual one? When you were asking me about her boobs I didn’t think you were serious.” The last part she says jokingly trying to ease the anxiety from Eve’s face.

“Ha ha,” Eve deadpans.

“You remember she killed Bill right?”

“Yes! That’s why I stabbed her! But…”

“But what? But you regret stabbing her?” says Elena incredulous.

“Yes-No-I…It's complicated. I wanted to hurt her, but I don’t want to kill her. She’s-it's…looking in her eyes…sometimes I feel like I’m looking at myself.”

“Listen, you’re not a psychotic killer! Yeah, you’re both really smart, but she’s killed loads of people. You’ve only killed, like, one and a half. And, you know, you’re you.” Elena says gesturing at Eve, “You’re not her. You’re personable and funny and yeah, maybe the way your mind works is a little scary, but scary good! Sometimes you can be a bit intense, but you have to be in our line of work.”

“Yeah,” sighing resignedly, “yeah, I guess you’re right. Come on, we’ve got an early flight.”

They both say bye to each other as they depart, Eve waiting for the bus and Elena continuing to the tube.

 

Eve replayed her conversation with Elena over and over on her way home. She couldn’t stop thinking that Elena’s description of her, personable and funny, smart and intense, also described Villanelle. Except, Villanelle is probably more charming than she is.

Their conversation had cracked something open in her, like a damn breaking. Maybe confessing to almost fucking Villanelle had helped too.

Getting off the bus Eve knows what she needs to do, what she wants to do. It makes her nervous though.

 

Even after all this time, walking into her apartment, it's shocking to see what Villanelle did to it. Except, suddenly now it's not as unnerving as it once was.

She goes directly to her bedroom and kneels in front of her bed, taking a second to collect her thoughts. There's no coming back from this. Once she knows for sure, there's no going back.

Eve pulls her box of Villanelle's notes from under her bed. Without any second thoughts, she sits down in front of her computer to start translating them.

The postcards are short. An "I miss you." or "I'm thinking of you. Are you thinking of me?" and "You were in my dream last night.". Villanelle's letters though, Villanelle's letters to her are fervent, obsessive even.

She professes so many intimate things to Eve. Secret things. Dark things. Things that cause her stomach to clench and heart to pound. Things Eve has tried not to think about for almost a year as she's hunted Villanelle. Some of it reads like poetry but mostly it's how Villanelle believes they complete each other.

And even though Anna had warned her that she was Villanelle's type, it's still startling for Eve to see this side of Villanelle directed at her. The subject of Villanelle's desire and infatuation. After months of denying it, Eve could see it too. She finally admits to herself that it's mutual, the attraction and obsession and darkness. That they're two sides of the same coin. Eve with a normal outward persona and a hidden inner darkness. Villanelle with an outward darkness and a hidden inner desire to be normal.

The more Eve thinks about it, the more she recognizes some of her actions for what they were, what they are. Her obsession with female serial killers and what makes them tick, maybe it was a drive to understand herself. She remembers her outburst of “Cool!” seeing Villanelle’s work for the first time and later testing out what it would take to slice her own femoral artery before hiding the cut from Niko.

“Oh Niko,” Eve thinks sadly.

He refused to see her, all of her. Her darkness simmering just underneath. The same darkness that drew her to Villanelle, someone so free with her darkness. It was exciting and attractive, that kind of freedom. And that’s what she found attractive about Villanelle, the freedom to be everything she was. Eve craved it, craved freedom and craved Villanelle.

Standing in the middle of her apartment sipping lukewarm tea, the revelation hits her like a bus. The dread she had been feeling for months gives way to relief and joy and she smiles a knowing smile to herself finally understanding and finally willing to accept what was going on between Villanelle and her. Finally willing to accept what she wants.

“So, you furnish my apartment because you like me so much?”

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

After fleeing Eve’s hotel room in Barcelona, Villanelle somehow made it back to her flat in a blind rage without killing anyone. She feels as if she’s coming apart.

“How could I have been so stupid again?” she berates herself. “First Anna, now Eve.”

The word ‘unlovable” whispers in the back of her mind. She can’t stand it, the feeling of powerlessness. So convinced Eve had felt something for her, anything for her. And after London? Eve could have killed her, arrested her, but she hadn’t. Eve saved her and let her escape. Villanelle had thought she saw desire, or at least longing, in Eve’s eyes after she killed that absurd man. But Eve played her again.

She can’t keep doing this, developing feelings for people who only see her as a monster, as a psychopath. Isn’t that what Eve had called her? A psychopath?

Her flat suddenly feels too small. She has to get out and do anything other than think about Eve.

 

The day after Eve's rejection Villanelle gets drunk. So drunk she thinks she’s back in Paris and only realizes she’s not when she tries to break into a building that looks like her flat back in the city of lights. The second day, after passing out in the street because she couldn’t get into her actual flat in Barcelona, she only gets tipsy. Just drunk enough so thinking about Eve doesn’t sting so much. She goes back to the S&M club she joined when she first arrived in Barcelona but soon gets kicked out after she whips a man till he’s bleeding and they’re both crying. Him out of fear and pain. And Villanelle out of pain and rage.

She wanders back to her flat and drinks herself into a stupor, to the edge of alcohol poisoning.

She wakes up the next morning feeling like death, thoughts of Eve’s refusal still haunting her. She lays in bed for hours looking at the ceiling. Sweating out all the alcohol in her system. Trying to think of anything other than Eve and those last moments in Eve’s hotel room.

If Eve didn’t want her who would? Villanelle had been so sure she finally found someone like her. Someone willing to act, someone who could. Anna couldn’t. Anna killed herself. Eve had stabbed Villanelle and Villanelle knew then and there that there was no one else for her. No one else who could rival her, be her equal. So what was the point of all of this if Eve didn’t want her? Honestly, if she couldn’t have what she wanted then what was the point? If she couldn’t have Eve, what was the point?

She gets up from her bed, searches her closet for her gun, and sits on the floor contemplating suicide. She had thought about suicide when she went to prison after Anna betrayed her. She remembers being bored and angry. Suicide seemed like an easy answer if she was going to have to spend the rest of her life in a Russian prison. Death was definitely better than life in a Russian prison.

Committing suicide now though? She knows that her circumstances are different. She’s never been freer, living with virtually no consequences and unlimited amounts of money to spend however she wants, but the one thing she wants most she can’t have.

So Villanelle puts the gun to her chest. She can feel the bruise from Eve’s gun from three days before. A tear rolls down her cheek as she thinks about all the people who have left her or abandoned her. Her mother, her father, Anna, Konstantin, and now Eve.

She knows it’s going to be slow and she knows it's going to hurt if she shoots herself in the sternum, but anything is better than hurting for Eve. She closes her eyes, a few more tears spill out. She places her finger on the trigger, ready to pull it when her brow creases in confusion at hearing a buzzing. She waits, trying to figure it out, but her brain is muddled by alcohol and the noise is gone before she can place it.

She takes a deep breath, lets it out, finger ghosting on the trigger when she hears the noise again.

“What the fuck!” She gets up angry at being interrupted, searching her apartment for the source of the unidentifiable noise. Marching into her living room, she realizes it’s her phone.  

“Shit,” she says to herself before picking up. “Yes?”

“Did you clone her electronics?” It's Vik, her handler.

“No.”

Silence on the other end.

“Hello?”

“We need you to come to Finland in three days for reevaluation.”

This isn’t a reevaluation and she knows it. This is the final strike against her. Villanelle quickly runs through her options. She could try to disappear, but it would probably only delay the inevitable. She could turn herself over to a government intelligence agency. Be a confidential informant, but that sounds boring and Eve still wouldn't want her, so what would be the point.

She already made up her mind five minutes ago to kill herself. If she doesn’t go to them, they’ll come to her. So might as well go to them. What’s the harm in waiting three days to have someone else put her out of her misery. They might even be quicker.

“Ok. See you in Finland in three days.”

She decides on a suicide of sorts.


	7. Her hair isn't even that great

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They both bite off more than they can chew

She’s calm. Calmer than she should be she for someone who's waiting for certain death. It was comforting in a way. In three days’ time she won't be thinking about Eve, she'll be dead.

Waiting for her flight to Finland, Villanelle spent her last three days convincing herself she hated Eve. Hated how weak Eve made her. Hated how she thought about Eve all day and dreamt about her every night. Hated how Eve had manipulated her feelings for her. Hated how Eve used her. Hated how Eve refused her. All her convincing was starting to work on the third day.

“Her hair isn't even that great!” she angrily thought to herself boarding the plane.

The plane's landing turbulence woke Villanelle. She's exhausted despite sleeping the whole four-hour flight. Eve had floated in and out of her dreams. Taunting her, stabbing her, laughing at her, but somehow always out of her reach. After three days of systematically trying to hate Eve, thoughts of Eve still haunt Villanelle. Eve infuriated her and not in a charming way like it used to be. If she wasn't already marching towards her death, Villanelle thinks she would be on her way to London instead to kill Eve so she could finally be free of her.

Villanelle gets off the plane without any luggage but still heads to baggage claim. Vik had sent her an encrypted email after their phone call containing instructions about where to meet. She was to go to baggage claim four and look for a female security guard. The guard would be wearing her hat on backward and Villanelle needed to ask for the time. The guard would say, “It's 1:30 in the afternoon,” even though her plane touched down around six in the evening. Villanelle should reply, “Perfect for fishing,” at which point the guard would take her to Vik.

At baggage claim, Villanelle goes through Vik’s annoying procedure. She’s going to be dead soon, but she’s irritated at how many hoops they’re making her jump through so they can put a bullet in her brain.

The security guard leads her through the baggage sorting area. The only people back there are a few technicians milling around waiting to fix conveyer belts as soon as they break.

They pass through unnoticed out a side door opening into a wide alley where a black Volvo and Vik are waiting for them. Both Villanelle and the security guard walk over to him.

“Do you have my money?” the guard asks in accented English.

“Yes. It is in the trunk.”

Pointing aggressively at Villanelle, who raises her hands up defensively as if he were pointing a gun and not his finger, he orders her to get in the car. Villanelle gets in. No reason to fight this. She chose this.

Vik and the guard walk around to the trunk. Villanelle gets déjà vu looking in the rearview mirror feeling like the security guard is being very naïve.

Her intuition was right. She hears the soft ‘whip’ of a silenced gunshot and knows the security guard is dead. She feels the weight of the car bump up and down as Vik shoves the body in the trunk. He slams it shut, gets in the driver's seat, and calmly drives out of the airport.

Villanelle knows the guard’s death was meant as a warning for her. If he could kill in broad daylight in a public area then he wasn’t going to hesitate to kill her when they were alone. Little did he know she wouldn’t mind.

Vik drives through the city eventually making his way to the docks and stops in front of a small warehouse sitting apart from all the others. They both get out. Villanelle turns to look at the gulf. She closes her eyes against the glare from the partially setting sun reflecting off the water, feeling the warmth of it caress her face. Normally, she doesn’t stop to notice these kinds of things, but when your time is limited, sometimes it's better late than never.

“The fuck are you doing? Move!”

She takes a calming breath, in and out, and opens her eyes. He's pointing a gun at her when she turns around. She smiles. It throws him for a second, but he recovers. He waves his gun at her telling her to 'come on' as he nods to a rusty looking steel door at the front of the warehouse.

Villanelle makes an annoyed face, rolls her eyes, and walks past him inside.

The first thing that hits her is the smell of chemicals as her eyes adjust to the sudden darkness. It smells corrosive and volatile. Once her eyes do adjust, she can see several steel drums arranged like walls in a maze, stacked one on top of the other, all the way to the ceiling. Why were they always meeting in smelly buildings?

“Walk,” she hears behind her, feeling the barrel of his gun in her lower back.

She makes her way through the makeshift maze until it opens up to a table and two chairs in front of a staircase.

He tells her to sit. Vik sits across from her with his gun still pointing at her.

“You must know why you are here.”

“It probably has something to do with failing my last job,” she replies sounding bored.

“It was not just your last job. It has been several jobs. The only reason you were not eliminated sooner was because Konstantin protected you.”

That smarts a little. She had thought Konstantin was lying to her when she had cornered him in his house. She thought he said all those nice things to make her hesitate before killing him. His plan had worked. She had hesitated. He used the truth and told her things she had always wanted to hear to escape her and, because of that, she had thought Konstantin had lied to her. Even as she finally killed him, Villanelle thought he used her deepest and most secret desires against her. It had made it easier to pull the trigger the second time.

But knowing the truth, that Konstantin had actually cared for her and the Twelve had used her to kill him hurt a little. She shakes the feeling off. Being so close to death was making her sentimental.

“So I have been difficult for a while, but I have also been very effective.”

“Yes, but you are not always discrete. For some reason you tend to leave witnesses or kill people, important people who should not be killed. You leave behind evidence, and most curious of all, on one occasion your cover was the name of an MI6 operative. Now, why would you do these things?”

Villanelle is silent trying to read his face to see how serious this situation actually is. Even though she came here to commit suicide by proxy, she didn’t appreciate his suggestions that she was bad at her job. She wasn't here to be lectured. She was here to be free of Eve.

She narrows her eyes and says, “Sometimes the jobs are too simple. What can I say, I like a challenge.”

“Well, you certainly have been challenging as of late. I talked to your therapist about it. He told me the last time you went to see him with Konstantin you still had your Anna problem. He also said you told him it wasn’t Anna. Which of all the things you told him, was probably the only true thing you said.”

Villanelle gulps. Vik continues.

“When he told me this I was very surprised because I remember you telling me you left Paris because, Anna your lover, killed herself. So, maybe you left Paris for another reason? One you did not want to tell me?”

Villanelle knows where this is going now and she doesn’t like it. She remains silent, her face still, masking her growing unease underneath.

His smile is malicious as he says, “Did you know we were spying on you in Paris? I know. I know. You think you picked Paris and the flat there, but really we manipulated you. Do you know why? No? It was used by your predecessor and their predecessor and so on and etcetera. You are all very replaceable. For all those years we had a spy across the hall watching you, taking notes about you. So it was very easy to corroborate the story you told John and I. All we had to do was ask Madame Tattevin.”

“Shit,” thinks Villanelle. She had always like Madame Tattevin too.

Villanelle gulps away her alarm and wrath at the realization she was never really in control, that she was just a puppet this whole time. Like he said, replaceable, nothing special.

“She told us someone had already met with her to see how she was doing, an Asian woman.”

A small guttural noise escapes from Villanelle as she clenches and unclenches her fists.

“Ah! So you do know her! John and I thought as much. Tattevin told us the Asian woman stabbed you and that is why you fled. Which really is too bad for you and for her, because apparently she copied all of Tattevin’s noted on you, took your laptop, and all the postcards we gave to you. Do you have any idea how fucking stupid you are?” he shouts at her.

Villanelle jumps at his sudden outburst.

He takes a breath to calm himself. 

“Tattevin has grown stupid in her old age. A mistake by the organization to keep her around for so long. Your Asian woman led Tattevin to believe she was part of the organization in order to gain access to her records about you. It worked, obviously. She now has more information on us than anyone else outside of the organization making her very dangerous.”

Villanelle wishes she had brought a gun, or at least a knife. She noticed a lighter in his car earlier, but she hadn’t grabbed it and now she's wishing she had.

“So the problem for John and I became identifying who your Asian woman was. It was very easy because you are very fucking stupid.”

Villanelle’s anger keeps rising the more he calls her stupid.

“You had already told us her name, Eve Polastri. With a little digging, we found out she is Korean. How stupid of you to use her name like that.”

Villanelle knows Eve is in trouble. Surprisingly, she doesn't like it. Even in the current situation she herself had chosen, if anyone was going to kill Eve it was going to be her not some random assassin.

“I tried to tell father about this, but he needed more evidence that you were being stupid. You are a very expensive investment. He wanted to be sure before we resorted to drastic measures. We gave you Konstantin to kill expecting you to falter, you did not. It was a very good kill. But a lot of interesting things happened before and during and after.”

Villanelle’s eyes narrow and her body tenses like an animal backed into a corner willing to do whatever it can to come out of the looming fight alive.

“The phone we gave you in Rome doubles as a tracking device so we knew you were visiting a duplex in London. John did some digging and found that number 47 Brickelbriar Ave. belonged to a Ms. Eve Park. Formally Mrs. Eve Polastri.”

Now the red lights are flashing and the alarm bells are clanging in Villanelle head.

His voice rough and cold, he asks, “What were you doing in her flat?”

Villanelle stays silent.

Vik studies her face before saying, “Doesn’t matter. The last straw was your failure in Barcelona.” He waves his gun at her, his face and voice full of arrogance, “It was a test for you, your last chance. All you had to do was clone her electronics. You couldn’t even do that. So fucking simple, but apparently too difficult for you.”

He gets up indicating that she should follow in front of him. He uses the gun to guide her up the stairs towards the door at the top.

“What happened? Did she stab you again? No? No matter, your actions in London and Barcelona were enough to convince my superior that further actions needed to be taken to correct your mistakes.”

Villanelle opens the door, momentarily paralyzed by what she saw behind it. She can feel his lips close to her ear when he whispers, “So, I took them.”

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

THREE DAY EARLIER - HELSINKI

   

The four MI6 agents get off the plane and collect their bags at baggage claim four. Actually, Kenny, Carolyn, Elena collect their bags. Eve carried hers on the plane. Kenny, Elena, and Eve pile into the back of a taxi while Carolyn sits in the front seat. They go to their hotel, check-in, and set their luggage in their rooms. Eve and Elena are sharing. Kenny and Carolyn each get their own. Once settled, they meet in the corner of the hotel’s bar out of earshot of any other patrons.

“We’re all here? Good,” says Carolyn brisk as ever. “We’re all going to go to the Finnish Security Intelligence Service headquarters. Elena and I are going to meet with a team to discuss Cyryl Laine and possible leads into the autoerotic assassin. Kenny, you and Eve are going to meet with their cybersecurity team for leads into LaZo.”

They leave to go to the gray and yellow building in the middle of Helsinki that houses the Finnish Security Intelligence Services. Carolyn tells the front desk who they are and who is expecting them. The receptionist assisting them calls the two different offices.

A senior domestic terrorism agent greets all of them, but he’s there to take Carolyn and Elena upstairs to meet the head of domestic terrorism. Behind Carolyn’s back Elena waves goodbye to them with a huge smile on her face.

The head of cybersecurity, agent Tille Koskinen, comes to personally collect Eve and Kenny to escort them to the basement where the cybersecurity department is housed. Her office is adjacent to a glowing blue room filled with servers. She sits on one side of her desk and Kenny and Eve sit on the other.

After pleasantries Koskinen says, “Carolyn told me over the phone you had questions about a Finnish hacker?”

Eve and Kenny look at each other silently deciding who’s going to explain their problem. On the flight to Finland, their small group had decided to be as vague as possible, completely omitting any connections to the Twelve that they could. They didn’t know how far the Twelve’s influence spread and didn’t want to risk tipping them off.

“Well,” begins Eve, “a few days ago two British banks, Barclays and HSBC Holdings, were hacked simultaneously and remotely. A few lines of script in the code we identified belonged to LaZo, a hacker we believe Finnish Intelligence is familiar with.”

“I had not heard about that breach!” a shocked Koskinen replies.

“Both of the banks and the client LaZo targeted asked us to keep the breach quiet until we could press charges.”

“It was only one account targeted at both banks? That is unusual. Who was the target?”

Kenny watches this back and forth between Eve and Koskinen, slightly aghast at how effortlessly and convincingly Eve is lying to the head of Finnish cybersecurity.

With exaggerated apologetics, “I’m sorry but until we,” gesturing to herself and Koskinen, “bring in LaZo, Carolyn thinks it best to remain as tight-lipped as possible.”

“May I ask what in the code makes you think it is LaZo who is behind your hack?”

Kenny’s turn to lie. He’s terrible at it. “Uh-well-the code we were able to-uh pull off of the-uh banks’ hard drives had one line of code that ended with ‘LaZo’. So it was pretty obvious that it was him.”

Koskinen rolls her eyes, sighs, and leans forward to clasp her hands on her desk saying, “Some of these hackers are so juvenile and egotistical. I mean really, who signs a code they used to hack two of Britain’s largest banks. I mean really.” And whatever ice that was between them is broken.

She tells Kenny and Eve that her Finnish cybersecurity team was, in fact, keeping tabs on LaZo, real name Neil Heikkinen.

“Do you know where he is?” asks Eve

“We do,” Koskinen says slowly. “But I would caution you against contacting him.”

“Great! Wait, why?” asks Eve confused

“Security services have been trying to develop him as an asset, but he hates the government. Currently, we have nothing to charge him with that could force his hand into working with us.”

Eve looks to Kenny and Kenny looks at Eve subtly shaking his head. He knows what Eve is going to say, but also knows Carolyn isn’t going to approve of it.

“What if you let Kenny and I talk to him and the Finnish government can leverage the British government’s charges against him?”

Koskinen doesn’t say anything, instead, she just looks at Eve, trying to size her up, sizing up her offer. Eventually, she grabs a post-it note, checks something on her computer, and writes something on the post-it. She passes the note to Eve across her desk. Eve doesn’t look at it, just slips it into her pocket. 

Both Eve and Koskinen stand up and leave Koskinen’s office with Kenny, slightly confused by what’s happening, hastily following behind. The three of them walk in silence back into the front lobby of the Intelligence building.

Koskinen turns to Eve and says, “Sorry I couldn’t help you find LaZo,” offering Eve her hand.

“I understand how difficult it would be for you in your position,” and Eve shakes her hand.

Koskinen leaves them in the lobby to wait for Carolyn and Elena. When she’s out of earshot Kenny urgently whispers, “What just happened?”

“Shh! Later!”

An hour goes by before Carolyn and Elena walk down the stairs, finally done with their meeting.

“Have we got something interesting to tell you!” says Elena when they're back together. But before she can tell them, Carolyn cuts her off. “Not here. We will meet in your's and Eve’s room after dinner to discuss.”

   

After dinner, in Elena and Eve’s room, Elena finally tells Eve and Kenny that they have a name of a suspect for the autoerotic assassinations, Mikael Laine. Finnish Intelligence was already suspicious and had been keeping an eye on him. The information from Eve's independent investigation and McDonald’s murder confirmed their misgivings and provided them with enough cause to get a warrant for his arrest. 

“Laine? As in Cyryl Laine? Are they related?” asks Eve

“Yeah!” exclaims Elena, “and the best part is that its Cyryl Laine’s son! How crazy?!”

“Yes. Crazy,” says Carolyn emotionlessly. “Tomorrow Elena and I are going to coordinate with the international and domestic Finnish intelligence agencies as well as local police to find and arrest Mikael Laine.” She says this as if she just told them what she’s going to have for breakfast tomorrow morning. “What did you and Kenny find, Eve?”

Still processing everything Elena and Carolyn had just told her, “Ahhh,” shaking her head to clear it, “agent Koskinen told us the Finnish government is aware of LaZo, but if we want to contact him we have to forge bank hacking charges for the Finnish government to bring against him.” Eve doesn’t mention that Agent Koskinen gave her his address, and Kenny’s forgotten.

They sit in silence, each thinking about whether or not to use the power of the British Intelligence services to bring false charges against a citizen of an allied country effectively lying to said country. Carolyn and Eve are fine with it. Elena is leaning towards no. Thinking about it makes Kenny a little ill.

“So, are we going to forge them?” asks Elena

Eve says yes and Carolyn says no putting the matter to bed. Kenny breathes a sigh of relief.

“I don’t know anyone in Finnish Intelligence well enough to know whether or not they could be a double agent for the Twelve.”

“So what’s that mean?” Elena asks Carolyn

“It means the hacking lead has run its course unless we can think of some other way to get to LaZo. We can’t trust anyone well enough to tell them the truth about why we want to talk to him.”

The meeting is over but before Carolyn and Kenny leave, she tells Kenny and Eve that they’ll go with her and Elena tomorrow to help coordinate Mikael's arrest.

 

It’s just Elena and Eve in their hotel room as the two agents get ready for bed when a concerned Elena asks, “So you would lie to a foreign government and falsify criminal charges against one of its citizens in order to talk to LaZo?”

Eve pauses what she’s doing and takes her hair down to think about what Elena’s truly asking her before answering. “Yes. It’s our quickest way to find Villanelle…and the Twelve.”

Elena sighs and walks to the bathroom before saying, “You know, I always knew that you bent the rules a little. Like when you went to interview that polish woman, but that is-that is way past bending.” And with that, she shuts the bathroom door to take a shower.

Eve knows Elena is right and under her breath says, “Yeah, I’ve changed.”

She turns off the light and crawls into bed. Eve hears Elena finish showering and get into bed too. Before long Eve can hear Elena snoring. Eve can’t sleep though. She keeps thinking about her admission, that she’s changed.

She realizes she changed the moment she stabbed Villanelle. She always felt like she could commit an act of extreme violence, but hadn't known she would. Like joking with Niko about how she would kill him. Eve thought she was just joking.

She realizes those violent and dark capabilities were always possible for her, but now her instinct to suppress them is gone and that's what changed about her. Stabbing Villanelle had freed her, had unlocked something in her. Villanelle let Eve be her truest self. It wasn’t like she was going to be a contract killer, but she was going to make those hard choices. Like lying to an allied foreign government to get intel she needed.

Thinking about Villanelle, Eve finally falls asleep.

 

At breakfast, Elena says to Eve, “You were having a fun dream last night.”

Eve chokes on her eggs, coughs, and says, “Was I?”

Teasingly, “Someone new?”

“Ah, no. No one new,” and before Elena can ask another question, Carolyn and Kenny join them at their table.

Over breakfast, Carolyn explains that they are going to meet both branches of Finnish Intelligence at police headquarters to discuss the assault on Mikael Laine’s residences.

“Residences? As in more than one?” Kenny asks

“Yeah, he’s got like three apartments and two houses in and around the city and close to Oulu,” Elena clarifies.

“What’s the plan?” asks Eve getting to business

“We’ll decide ‘the plan’ with the rest of the Finnish forces,” says Carolyn.

They finish breakfast and cram into another taxi like a troop of clowns to make their way uncomfortably to police headquarters.

 

Hours of discussion later, a plan all four groups could agree to was decided. The following day at ten in the evening, right after sundown, five teams would move on all five of Mikael Laine’s residences simultaneously. Local police would make up the bulk of the assault forces, while representatives from each branch of intelligence services, Finnish, both international and domestic, and MI6, would accompany each team. There was one catch though, there were only four MI6 agents and five strike teams. Carolyn, Elena, Kenny, and Eve would each have to be separated and one team would not have an MI6 agent.

The four MI6 agents met with their respective teams to review in detail their specific plans for breaching their assigned Laine residence. Eve was partnered with strike team four, which was tasked with securing Mikael’s house twenty minutes north of Helsinki in Tapaninvainio. Carolyn was with team one who would secure Mikael’s apartment in Helsinki proper. Elena and Kenny were working with teams two and three, respectively. They had to take a one-hour flight tomorrow morning to Oulu because Mikael rented an apartment in the city and owned a farmhouse twenty minutes south of Oulu. Mikael also rented an apartment close to the Russian border, but strike team five, the with only Finns, was going there.

Carolyn, Kenny, Elena, and Eve get back to their hotel late mentally exhausted from devising and reviewing their teams' plans of attack to finding and bringing in Mikael Laine. Elena and Kenny had to leave early in the morning too. So, the four of them eat at their hotel and call it a night feeling the uncertainty of tomorrow.

 

Both Eve and Carolyn wake up with Elena and Kenny to see them off to the airport and wish them luck in their hunting. Carolyn goes back to bed. They don’t have to report to their strike teams till noon.

Eve watches Carolyn take the elevator back up to her room. She looks at her watch, it's 8:30 am. Eve does some mental math involving drive times. Deciding she has enough time to try to talk to LaZo and make it back to be ready to meet her strike team, she goes up to her room to grab everything she’s going to need for later.

She calls for a taxi and forty-two minutes later Eve is standing outside a manor in southwest Finland. Not exactly where she expected a hacker to live. She doesn’t know if she should knock or use the door knocker, so she does both.

A gentlemanly looking man in his late thirties answers the door.

“Voinko auttaa sinua?”

“Shit!” thinks Eve. She hadn’t even concidered the possibility of him speaking Finnish to her.

“Uh-hi-hello Mr. Heikkinen, do you speak English?”

One eyebrow raised in suspicion, “Joo. Yes, of course I speak English.”

“Oh thank God! I didn’t know what I was going to do if you didn’t,” she offers placatively with a smile. She tries an approach that worked for her before.

“I’m with the Twelve. They wanted me to stop by and ask you in person if anyone from Tesla has contacted you about the hacking in Barcelona.”

“No, Mikael assured me there would be no evidence left behind at the scene. If there was it is not my fault, it is hers! I told him remotely hacking a moving vehicle to take control of it would take at least six months, but he only gave me three. If this blows back on me, I swear I-Hitto vieköön!”

Eve doesn’t know what he swears because he cusses in Finnish and slams the door in her face.

She stands still, looking at the door in shock at how abruptly their conversation had ended. Eve tries knocking on the door again but no answer. She can’t wait much longer. She needs to get back to get ready for tonight. Taking one last look at LaZo manor, she gets back in the idling taxi to return to Helsinki.

At least she learned that there’s some sort of nexus between Villanelle, Fournier, Mikael Laine, and McDonald.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

“Slow down! What do you mean an Asian-American woman from our organization came to threaten you about the Barcelona job?” shouts Mikael into his phone.

“She shows up at my doorstep asking if I speak English and accuses me of being the weak link in that job. If you ask me it was her fault! I told you it was going to be too hard to erase evidence of the hack! But NO! You didn’t want to listen to me and now you send someone to threaten me!”

“Listen LaZo, I didn’t send anyone. The Barcelona job actually went really well. Exactly like I had expected it to. The Asian woman you met is not part of our organization. She’s with MI6.”

There’s incoherent yelling on the other end of the line as LaZo panics about being made by British Intelligence.

“Stop, stop, stop! Neil! SHUT THE FUCK UP!” There’s silence on the other end. “This isn’t an issue-“

“NOT AN ISSUE?” LaZo interrupts. “NOT AN ISSUE? MI6 just showed up at my door asking about being an accessory to murder! How is that not an issue?”

Calmly, “I expected her to come. I’ve orchestrated all of these events since learning about our little MI6 shadow. Trust me, she won’t be an issue after tonight. I have some informants in Finnish Intelligence and the police who have already told me their plans. There’s nothing to worry about.”

“There better not be!” LaZo shouts into the phone before hanging up.

Mikael shakes his head in annoyance and goes back to staring out of the window waiting for sundown.  

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

9:50 pm. It’s almost time. Each team has checked in and confirmed they were in place. There’s radio silence between the teams, but COMMs are open in the teams.

At exactly 10:00 pm, the police will storm the premises while the intelligence agents wait for the all clear to either read Mikael his rights or search for evidence if he wasn’t there. Eve and the other two intelligence agents were waiting down the street in an unmarked black van for the strike to begin. They hadn’t said much to each other. Too many nerves for any of them to hold a conversation for long.

9:56 pm. The tension is unbearable. Eve can’t wait for the release. She thinks this must be what Villanelle feels before a kill. All this build up, the planning, the tension and anticipation, and finally, the thrill of acting. Eve understands the allure and remembers the satisfaction she had momentarily felt in Villanelle apartment before everything fell apart beneath her.

9:59 pm. One minute. Eve can feel each second tick away heavier and heavier as her adrenaline starts to spike. Her head feels light as her pulse quickens.

10:00 pm. There are several large booms in her COMMs and several officers are shouting orders as they breach the front and side doors. Seconds later everything goes wrong. Several officers are down from gunshot wounds. It seems like Mikael is here and he’s not going to go quietly. The two intelligence officers in the van, who are armed, run to the officers in the house to provide backup leaving Eve alone and unarmed.

Mikael must be barricaded in a room and well-armed because the fighting is still ongoing when she hears a knock at the van door thinking it’s one of the agents asking her to call for more backup. Eve scarcely has time to turn around and see which of the two came back before she feels a sharp pain across the side of her head. She blacks out.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

7 MILES SOUTH OF OULU – KENNY

 

Strike team three had just finished securing the farmhouse. It had taken over two hours for them to sweep all the buildings on the property. Kenny had been nervous the whole time waiting for something to go wrong. He had a feeling all day that something was off but he couldn’t place it. He didn’t want to dwell too heavily on it hours before possibly confronting a dangerous assassin. To his relief though, everything had gone smoothly and best of all Mikael wasn’t here.

Waiting in the van for the final all clear with the two other Finnish agents, Kenny gets a call from his mother.

“Hello?”

“Kenny? Good. You’re still here.”

“Um-Sorry-What?-Of course I’m still here. Where else would I be? Where are you?” he asks his mother confused why she’s calling him in the middle of a dangerous raid when there's supposed to be radio silence.

“I'm also still here. Have you been able to contact Elena?”

“No, what’s wrong with Elena? What’s going on?”

“Hmm, I haven’t been able to get ahold of team two either. They must still be in radio silence.”

“Mum, what’s going on?”

Silence on the other end for a brief moment before Carolyn breaks the news. “It appears that Eve had been abducted. We don’t yet know by who, but there’s a very good chance that it was Mikael Laine. Team four experienced heavy resistance from a jerry-rigged machine gun set on a timer to fire at exactly 10:00 pm. It appears we have another mole. In all the chaos Eve was left alone in the van as the Finnish agents went to provide back up. When they returned, Eve was gone.”

Kenny can only ask, “What?” in a small shaky voice.

“Eve is missing, possibly kidnapped. I need you to have your wits about you because we don’t know who the leak is. It could be anyone or possibly multiple people. I also need you to try to contact Elena as soon as possible and let me know when you do whatever her status is. We don’t know if Eve was a random target or the only target. I’ll call again when I have more information.”

“Should I come to Helsinki?”

“No. You need to search his farmhouse for any information that might direct us to another possible location where he could be keeping Eve.”

“Ok. Bye.”

“Goodbye and good luck.”

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Eve regains consciousness slowly blinking herself awake. She makes a face at the searing pain on the side of her head. She tries to touch it to inspect whatever is causing her pain, but she realizes her wrists are tied along with her ankles to the chair she’s sitting in.

She blinks again trying to understand her surroundings, confused about what’s going on. All she can remember is waiting in the van and hearing the firefight between Mikael Laine and the Finnish strike team. And Eve thinks she remembers a knock at the van’s door? And then…nothing. Now, she’s tied to a chair in what appears to be a dingy crowded office that smells noxious and a bit like iron.

Her head is pounding and her mouth is dry. She doesn’t know how long she’s been here. Eve tries to turn her head to the right at the sound of metal tapping wood, but the pain in her head intensifies. She sees stars and gasps.

“You’re finally awake.”

Whoever is talking to her is out of her line of sight and she can’t turn her head to look.

Mikael Laine lazily strolls into view to lean against one of the many wooden crates packed into the small office. Eve notices his gun.

He sees her eyeing it. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to kill you. I’m going to hurt you, but I won’t kill you.”

“Now, tell me why you were talking to Neil Heikkinen yesterday?”

“Who?” Eve’s not bluffing. She honestly can’t remember talking to a Neil Heikkinen. The pain at the back of her head was making it hard to recall anything that happened before she opened her eyes a minute ago.

“You might know him as LaZo.” He walks behind her making her nervous. Eve doesn’t like him where she can’t see him. 

“I don’t kn-“

‘THUD’

Eve can’t see. Her head feels like its splitting open. If she had any food in her stomach she’d be vomiting. Mikael smacked her where he hit her the day before when he kidnapped her from the van.

“I do not want to hear NO!” he roars making her head hurt even more.

Her breathing is heavy and measured trying to prevent herself from passing out. He asks her again if she knows who LaZo is.

In between breaths, Eve says, “Yes…I know…Neil…Heikkinen.”

“What were you talking to him about yesterday?”

“His…signature…was in…a bug used… to hack a…Tesla in Barcelona,” her breathing becoming more normal as some of her pain dissipates.

Mikael purses his lips at learning of LaZo’s arrogance and stupidity.

Eve can hear his obvious anger about her answer in his voice when he asks her who she works for.

“Tesla. I’m a Tesla software engineer,” lies Eve.

“What would a Tesla software engineer be doing with elite Finnish Intelligence agents and a police swat team while they are breaking into my house?”

Eve stills. The gig is up. She knows he knows.

 “Why are Finnish Intelligence services and MI6 after me?”

Eve decides to remain silent.

“WHY!”

Eve jumps in the chair a little and her head is pounding again, but she doesn’t answer.

“Fine, we’ll see if you cooperate when you wake up!” He punches her in the head and Eve blacks out again.

 

Eve wakes up again still tied to the chair, but this time with duct tape on her mouth. She can hear the low murmur of a conversation below her. Her head feels like it might have been cleaved in two. Even the low light from the fluorescent bulbs in the office is too bright. She can hear what sounds like footsteps ascending stairs.

The door swings open and there’s Villanelle. Eve’s brain is moving too slowly from being hit two too many times. She thinks she’s hallucinating. Eve misses all the emotions flitting through Villanelles eyes and her hand moving to her stomach. She only realizes Villanelle is actually there then Mikael says, “If you want to continue working, then you need to fix your mistakes,” he presses a second gun into Villanelle’s hand with his gun still pressing between Villanelle’s shoulder blades, “and kill her.”

“Why is she here?” asks Villanelle fury at the edge of her voice, standing directly in front of a gaged, bound, and bleeding Eve, gun at her side.

Mikael moves father into the office to sit on a crate. Pointing his gun at Villanelle, “I figured two birds with one stone. You get to prove your loyalty and clean up your problem with one bullet, which, by the way, there’s only one bullet in that gun. So do not try anything.” 

“I kill her and you will let me leave to continue working?”

“You are a very effective and expensive asset that would take too long to replace. Others in the organization think it would be best for you to personally eliminate your distractions.”

“But not you?” says Villanelle sizing up the situation.

“I think you are easily replaceable. Personally, I would like to end this relatively quickly.” Pointing his gun at Eve, “Maybe torture her a little in front of you and then when I get bored, two bullets. One in her brain. One in yours. Problem solved.”

“Of course,” he continues, “if you don’t kill her, my orders are to kill her then you. So either way, she’s dead.”

Villanelle’s eyes haven’t left Eve’s face since she opened up the door to the office. She looks terrible. Villanelle can tell Eve is having trouble focusing and there’s blood dripping down her face. Villanelle’s brow scrunches and she clenches her jaw as she struggles to decide whether she should kill Eve or if she should let Mikael kill them both. She had just spent three days convincing herself that she hated Eve and resigning herself to an alternative version of suicide when maybe her solution really was that simple. Kill Eve. Maybe, she thinks, this is what she needs, a clean break and she can finally be free to do her job.

She’s still thinking her options though when Mikael gets a call.

His face is unreadable as he picks up and listens to the person on the other end before saying, “What! No. I should be finished up here soon. What do you mean they’re already looking for-“

Mikael abruptly points his gun at Villanelle and says, “Do not do anything stupid or I will torture her when I get back if she’s not already dead!” and marches down the stairs to finish his phone call. 

Once on the first floor, he says into the phone, “I’m almost done here. I’m pretty sure she’s going to kill the MI6 bitch and then I’m going to kill her…Yes, I know the rest of your friends want to keep her alive but why? I am better than her! I've killed dozens of people for you father and no one came asking questions about it until we got her involved…Ok yes. I'll hurry and dispose of their bodies when I’m done. The other MI6 agents who are looking for her won't even find her body until I have left the country…Yes of cour-“

BANG!

Mikael looks at the ceiling above him with a wicked smile.

“Sorry father I have to go. It sounds like the fun has started.” He ends the call and runs up the stairs excited at the prospect of seeing Eve’s head in pieces and Villanelle naïvely expecting a commendation.


	8. Have you decided yet?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The End

The sun had set nearly three hours ago and it was now very late. So late it's technically early. There’s a chill in the air. Partially because of the early hour. Partially because of the rain that soaked the city all day.

It's early enough that anyone out in the city looks suspect. In fact, the Préfecture de police de Paris had received several calls about a suspicious person on the Pont de Bir Hakeim and subsequently dispatched a pair of uniformed officers to investigate.

When the two DOPC officers reach the bridge they flash the lights on their car, pull to the side of the road, and slow to a stop. The driver opens his door and steps out but stays by the car as his partner goes to investigate the reported suspicious person.

As she approaches the Momument de la France Renaissante, the second officer can see someone leaning against the statue, their hood up to shield themselves from the light rain, looking out onto the Seine.

They appear not to have heard the police car arrive and don’t turn around until the second officer asks, “Excusez-moi, vous allez bien?”

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

HELSINKI – CAROLYN – FIVE DAYS EARLIER

 

“Yes Kenny, I’m here. The fire department almost has the situation under control…No, stay in Oulu with Elena. I still need the two of you to coordinate with Finnish intelligence while they continue to search Mikael’s farmhouse and apartment…Yes, I will call as soon as there’s news. Bye.”

Carolyn put the SCBA back on after hangs up the phone. When she had initially arrived at the burning warehouse, it was late the day before. Now, it's early morning and Eve's been missing for close to two days.

Strike team four only noticed Eve's absence when they contacted strike team one asking for assistance and first aid and Carolyn had asked to speak with Eve, to which no one could find her. The chaos at team four's location prevented anyone from realizing Eve was gone until it was too late.

Then, twenty-four hours after her disappearance, Finnish Intelligence received an anonymous tip from an untraceable call about a warehouse fire on the shipping docks. The caller, whose voice was electronically garbled, hinted that the fire on the West Harbor was related to a missing MI6 agent.

When Carolyn arrived six hours after first responders, firefighters were still battling the unpredictable blaze. They were having a difficult time because an hour into battling the fire, firefighters had been rocked by a large boom. At first, they thought a bomb had gone off. The blast was actually caused by the metal drums exploding due to the heat of the fire. It wasn't until another explosion launched a drum through the roof of the warehouse into the harbor that they fully realized what they were dealing with.

So when Carolyn pulled up to the scene, the fire chief warned her about the toxic smoke from the chemical fire and outfitted her with a SCBA. The head of arson, who knew she was looking for her agent, also greeted her. He told her that identifying a body in the building’s smoking pile of rubble was going to be difficult due to the temperature and duration of the fire and the chemicals in the metal drums.

Hours later, after the residual heat dissipated and almost two and half days after Eve went missing, Carolyn finally entered the remains of the warehouse. The arson team cleared a path through the scorched debris. Only the blackened metal barrels, once containing unnamed chemicals, were identifiable in the low light of the early morning. Everything and possibly anyone were now ash.

In the daylight, investigators removed enough charred debris to discover roasted human remains shielded by a fallen circular metal light fixture. The flesh resembled charcoal and had shrunken in the fire pealing back to reveal blackened bone.

Carolyn held the remains in her gloved hand, steeling herself before she made her phone call.

“Hello, Kenny?…Oh, Elena. I was just calling Kenny to let you both know that we have possibly found a body…No, they can’t identify it yet. It’s more of a bone fragment than a body. I imagine the flesh is too badly damaged to be of any help...Yes. We're just waiting for a forensic anthropologist to identify if it is male or female, but I believe we’ll have to wait for DNA from the bone to tell us who we’ve found…No. Finish in Oulu. The cat is already out of the bag. Coming here isn’t going to change anything, but you might discover information that could track Mikael down. Make copies of everything and be sure got get as many pictures as you can.” She hangs up feeling out of sorts. 

The forensic anthropologist arrives soon after Carolyn’s conversation with Elena. She identifies the bone as a femur belonging to a female. Beyond that, she needs more bones to be certain of anything else. She recommends a DNA test. Carolyn packs the bone into an evidence bag labeled ‘Jane Doe’ and hands it to the lead investigator.

 

Kenny and Elena remain in Oulu for another day copying documents as Carolyn suggested. Meanwhile, Carolyn coordinates with teams one, four, and five on document recovery. On the fourth day after Eve's abduction, Kenny and Elena join Carolyn in Helsinki to help her sort through the documents and electronic records hoping for leads that might indicate where Mikael fled after setting his warehouse on fire and killing Eve. They find nothing. If Mikael is at another of his unregistered safehouses, it, like the now burned down warehouse, is off the grid.

With all their leads burned up or at dead ends, Kenny, Elena, and Carolyn leave Helsinki to continue their investigation on the Twelve from London. Finnish Intelligence promises to keep their team in the loop and will alert them when the DNA testing in their lab is complete. Carolyn had decided to have the DNA testing done in both Finland and independently with a forensic lab in Britain. She also requested the sample to be labeled ‘Jane Doe’. The drawback is they have to wait a month. Running the DNA as an anonymous sample makes it a low priority for the Finnish and British forensic labs but reduces the change the Twelve will learn about the results. Carolyn thought it was worth it. After Bill and Konstantin and now Eve, they can’t lose anyone else to the Twelve.

Back in London, MI6 officially declare Eve MIA as they wait for the results of DNA testing to declare her dead.

So they wait, their last little bit of hope dependent on a negative DNA test that maybe Eve hadn’t been abducted and afterwards murdered in a horrible chemical fire. 

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

PARIS – VILLANELLE

 

It was rather a bleak day in Paris. Villanelle thought it suited her mood. She felt unsettled and uncertain, on the tip of some unknown and undiscernible precipice.

She didn’t want to come to Paris. She really hadn’t. She was over it. She had moved on. She had thoroughly tried to put it in her past. If she went back to Paris, she told herself five days ago as she was driving through St. Petersburg in her newly stolen car after ditching Mikael Laine’s Volvo in a bad part of town, it would only bring her trouble. And normally she was the trouble, but now…well, she didn’t know.

Everything changed after Finland in a way she was unsure of. Villanelle didn’t know who she could trust. After what Mikael had told her about being manipulated into choosing Paris, being spied on, and then tricked into shooting Konstantin, Villanelle couldn't trust anyone. She didn’t like being manipulated and made to feel like a thing. The Twelve hadn’t really picked her, at least not in the way she thought they had. She wasn’t special to them. Oksana was one of many. She was just their latest investment. She was a replacement for her predecessors and one day the Twelve would replace her when they no longer found her worth the trouble.

After Helsinki, she thought she probably didn’t have a job with the Twelve anymore even if she did want to continue working for them. Villanelle couldn't trust them or any handler sent to try to control her. But leaving was going to be dangerous. She needed to disappear and Villanelle needed to become nonexistent.

Even if she did manage it, Villanelle didn’t know what she was going to do for work. It's not like she could work retail or whatever normal people did to make money. She had spent the last few years learning how to be an assassin and her profession suited her. She liked killing, even before her formal training. Though, in the past, there was always a reason. Avenging, revenging, or orders. Now, there's no one to avenge or get revenge on or orders to follow. She'll have to kill for the sake of killing if she wants to sate that predatory need of hers. If she continues, she'll become what Eve accused her of being, a psychopath. It’s another tipping point for her. Villanelle isn't sure what she wants to choose yet. Her choices during the year past hadn't exactly panned out for her the way she had wished.

She does know she needs to erase any trace of herself if she wants to survive the Twelve. So she’s in Paris to see Madame Tattevin and clean up one other loose end. She needs the old woman’s notes on her. Villanelle needs to erase all trace of her existence, and Madame Tattevin has more than a trace.

Villanelle strolls through Paris under an umbrella, passing by her old haunts. She’s jumpy and keeps looking over her shoulder expecting to see someone following her. She periodically squeezes Mikael’s gun in her coat pocket just to feel something solid. It’s not just Madame Tattevin’s notes she needs to erase.

She makes it to her old apartment building late in the afternoon. Villanelle walks up the back alley where almost half a year ago she fled, bleeding, and unsure of her future. Now, she returns healed but still unsure of her future. She slinks up the stairs and knocks on Madame Tattevin’s door. Waiting for an answer, she looks across the hall at her front door from a lifetime ago, thinking of everything that went wrong. Those thoughts unnerve her even more than she already is. She shakes her head and lets out a breath to clear those thoughts away. Focusing on the here and now and with no answer from Madame Tattevin, Villanelle breaks in.

“If I were an old woman where would I keep my spying notes?”

She checks everywhere and finds the box under Madame Tattevin’s kitchen sink. At the same moment, she hears a key in the lock of the front door. Villanelle coolly walks into the living room and sits at the table with the box of notes in her lap, gun pointed at the front door. Madame Tattevin shuffles in.

"Bonjour,” she says as if expecting Villanelle for tea.

Villanelle gives her an amused half smile. Tattevin hobbles into her kitchen with her bags. Villanelle just watches, offering no help. The old woman puts her shopping away and makes them both tea. When she’s finally finished, she brings two cups out and sets one in front of Villanelle along with a sealed envelope.

“What’s this?” asks Villanelle looking from the note to Madame Tattevin, gun still pointed at the old woman.

Tattevin laughs a little and says, “Your friend asked me to give it to you when you eventually came back.”

“I don’t have any friends.”

“What about that older man who was always coming to see you?”

“No. He’s dead.” Surprisingly Villanelle finds that thinking about Konstantin is unpleasant.

“I’m sorry. He was always very lovely to me. Much nicer than those two men who were asking about you. Bastards.”

Thinking for a second, Villanelle asks if the two bastards were a tall, bald, skinny guy and a tall muscular Viking looking man. She tells Tattevin that they were not her friends.

“Yes, that's them. They were very rude, so I’m glad you're not friends with them.”

With Villanelle still pointing the gun at her, the two women sip their tea in a silence occasionally broken by the clinking china.

Looking at the gun, then Villanelle, Madame Tattevin asks if Villanelle has decided if she’s going to kill her or not.

“I don’t work for our employers anymore and you know too much. You are seeing me now and that's information I don’t want anyone to have.”

Silence once more. Their cups are empty now.

“Have you decided yet? I have things to do,” asks Madame Tattevin impatiently.

“Why do you keep asking? Of course I’m going to kill you!”

“If you knew you were going to kill me you would have done it already.” She stares at Villanelle, waiting.

Villanelle stares back, thinking. She had always liked the older woman.

“Why didn’t you give the two men this note?” Villanelle asks fingering the envelope.

“They were very rude. They said I was too old and too stupid to do my job. Well, they were too stupid to ask about your note, so…,” and Madame Tattevin lets the implication hang in the air for Villanelle to catch. 

“Are you going to tell the Twelve I was here?”

“Those bastards? After the way they treated me? Never!” and Villanelle finally lowers her gun. Madame Tattevin continues, “Your Asian friend who left your letter with me was much nicer.”

Villanelle feels lightheaded and her heart constricts but she recovers before Madame Tattevin sees the effect of her words.

Villanelle takes her letter and Madame Tattevin’s notes when she leaves.

 

Her thoughts are frenzied and she can't seem to pin any of them down as she makes it to her hotel on autopilot in a daze staring at the envelope the whole time.

Being trapped in an elevator right now with just her thoughts would be too suffocating. So she takes the stairs to her floor to burn off the nervous anticipation building up in her. Villanelle drops the box of notes on the hotel bed and collapses on the edge. Her fingers tremble as she opens her letter.

The piece of paper inside only has one word, ‘Sorry’. She turns it over making sure. That’s it, just ‘Sorry’. No games, just the simple truth. Villanelle doesn’t know what to think. Her heart wants it to mean one thing, but her brain is screaming at her to stop being so naive. Eve had already used this trick on her before, presumably right before she wrote this note. Eve’s honesty was so befuddling to her. She was sure Eve wanted her the way she wanted Eve, but Eve would stab her or run from her, and Villanelle couldn’t take any more of Eve’s rejections.

Alone in the confined space of her hotel room with nothing but thoughts of Eve, was too much for Villanelle. Too many feelings she’s not used to. She needs to be outside, walk around or something. There’s still time left in the day for her to make up her mind.

So she leaves to stalk the streets of Paris to decide her next move. Trying to decided who she wants to be and what kind of future she wants.

 

The walk cleared Villanelle’s head, though her mind wasn’t quite made up. Eve’s letter had thrown her. She decided she needed to buy a knife so she picked one up at a 24-hour pawn shop not far from her destination. It was still drizzling, but she had left her umbrella in her hotel room. She was wearing a raincoat with the hood up so it wasn’t so bad. She fiddles with the knife in her pocket, nervous, tension building. She feels like an arrow strung taut on a bowstring waiting for release.

Villanelle is almost to where she said she would wait when a police vehicle passes her. The hair on the back of her neck pricks up. There’s a sneering voice in the back of her head saying ‘I told you so!’ But Villanelle needs to know for certain, so she continues to the bridge. She can see the police car flash its lights and pull over. She sneaks closer and watches as an officer gets out to approach someone leaning against the statue.

“This could be a setup,” she thinks.

Villanelle only catches the last part of the conversation as she draws closer. She hears the officer saying, “Well, do not wait around too long,” in a heavy French accent.

She hides in the archway, waiting for the DOPC officers to leave before she crosses the road. Once the police car turns the corner, Villanelle makes her way across the street. She was so focused she could've been hit by a car and never noticed it.

Unlike the police, Eve turns to her the moment she hears Villanelle crossing the street. Eve removes her hood revealing her hair. Villanelle stops dead in her tracks two meters away. Again, in the back of her head, a little voice is telling her it’s a trap, that Eve knows how to disarm her, knows the effect her hair has on Villanelle, that all of this is a trap, a ploy by Eve and MI6 to catch her.

Eve tries to say hello, but quick as lightening, Villanelle pushes Eve into the statue and puts the knife to Eve’s throat. Eve doesn’t say anything, but her brow scrunches in confusion, silently asking Villanelle ‘What are you doing?’ But Villanelle doesn’t back away. Instead she’s thinking about six days ago and what lead her here to Eve, pressing a knife to her throat.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

HELSINI – SIX DAYS AGO

 

Mikael answers the call from his father who informs him that he couldn't stall the Finnish Intelligence services in their search for the missing MI6 agent any longer. He shouts at Villanelle to refrain from doing anything stupid or he'll kill both of them before stomping down the stairs to finish his call in private.

Villanelle peers down the stairs, making sure Mikael is truly out of sight, before rather forcefully ripping the duct tape off Eve’s face. The sensation actually helps Eve focus. She looks at Villanelle and smiles.

“Thank god you’re here!” Eve whispers, happy to see her.

And Villanelle is…she doesn't know how she feels.

“What are you doing here?” hisses Villanelle.

“What am I doing here!” says Eve a little peeved that this is what Villanelle wants to discuss right now instead of how to escape. “I’m looking for you!”

“Well, here I am. What do you want?”

“I want you to get me out of here!”

Villanelle stares at her, thinking it over, but she hasn’t raised her gun to Eve yet.

“Why are you just standing there? You’re smart enough to know he’s going to kill you whether or not you kill me,” says Eve frantically.

“Thank you. I am very smart.”

Rolling her eyes, which makes Eve flinch in pain, “I’m glad we can agree on something.”

Villanelle studies Eve, keeping face impassive. She thinks she could kill Mikael and then kill Eve. Maybe Mikael was right, two birds with one stone, just one of her birds was different.

Pulling Villanelle out of her thoughts, Eve whispers, “Listen, I have an idea, but, God, please tell me you have your phone.”

“I do,” says Villanelle slowly still contemplating who she's going to kill as she pulls her phone out of her back pocket.

“Ok. Great. But if we do this you’ll never work for the Twelve again. He’s the son of one of the members of the Twelve. If you kill him-I can’t imagine they would stand for that. They would never stop hunting you.”

Villanelle remembers everything Mikael revealed to her about being manipulated and used and tricked by the Twelve when she had thought they valued her for who she was and what she was capable of, not because they had invested money in her. The Twelve saw her as a commodity, something to be used, like a nice car until the next model came out. She wasn’t special, just the newest model.

“Ok. Ok. What's your plan?” Villanelle thinks she could always kill Eve after.

“You need to google the sound of a gunshot. Turn the volume all the way up and play the clip so he thinks you shot me. He’ll come running up here thinking you’re out of bullets since he only gave you one to kill me. His guard will be down. Then you shoot him in the head. Are you sure you want to do this?”

“You're serious?”

“I know you like your job,” says Eve simply.

Villanelle is as still as a started deer right before it turns to flee. Could this be another one of Eve's tricks? She thinks about how Eve had deceived her in the past. But this moment doesn't feel like trickery. It feels true, but she could never tell with Eve.

Trust Eve or not, she needs to decide. Mikael's call isn't going to last much longer. She thinks about all the ways the Twelve have exploited her. It's an easy choice.

“Not anymore. I am going to press the muzzle of the gun to your temple to sell it, ok? You will need to slump your head forward. Do not move when he comes up the stairs.”

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever you think is going to help.”

Villanelle stands to the side of Eve, gun pressed to the side of her head causing Eve to gasp in pain.

“Sorry,” says Villanelle.

“No, no, don’t worry about it. Just play the clip.”

“Ok, ready?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want a countdown?”

“What?!” hisses Eve. “I just-ah-hmm-yeah. That’s actually a good idea.”

“Ok. 3. 2. 1.” Villanelle presses play, but no gunshot.

A pause before Eve asks, “What-What are you doing?!”

“Sorry, the volume was too low. Ok, this time for real, that was practice. You did well. You looked very dead. Ok. 3. 2. 1.”

'BANG!' goes the fake gunshot.

They both hear Mikael’s heavy footfalls running up the stairs, gun hanging lamely at his side. He looks at Villanelle as she sidesteps in front of Eve. He says, “Good, you killed that troublesome cun-“

'BANG!' goes the real gunshot. Then a series of dense thuds as Mikael's lifeless body tumbles down the stairs.

Villanelle burns molten as dopamine rushes into her bloodstream. She's momentarily overcome with the ecstasy of her kill. Eve is also in awe of how quickly Villanelle lined up and shot Mikael without even giving him time to bring his own gun up in defense. She must be superhuman Eve thinks.

Letting out a breath and releasing the tension in her shoulders, Villanelle turns to Eve.

"Thanks."

Villanelle responds by untying Eve. Despite her head injury, Eve quickly brushes past Villanelle down the stairs, missing Villanelle's startled reaction at their brief contact. Villanelle follows behind, her left arm searing where Eve touched her.

As they both look at Mikael’s body Eve asks, “What now?”

“Well, I could still kill you and get my job back.”

Eve is unphased by Villanelle empty threat. “You could kill me, but it won’t help you get your job back.” Pointing to Mikael’s dead body at the foot of the stairs contorted into an awkward pretzel shape, Eve says, “That’s Mikael Laine, Cyryl Laine’s son. Cyryl Laine who’s a member of the Twelve. I told you that already.”

“Oh. Right. Shit,” Villanelle replies absently.

“Yeah. Shit.” Eve gives her a concerned look. "Are you alright?"

"Yes," she says without meeting Eve's eyes. Villanelle thinks she should have killed Eve, but it's too late now. Eve so easily disarms her. And frustratingly too, without Eve even knowing it. Like when she first met Eve and felt like she'd been paralyzed in the woman's restroom the first time Eve asked if she was alright. 

Both of them look back down to Mikael’s crumpled body thinking about what to do next. Eve thinks they need to dispose of it and run. Villanelle feels lost but knows Eve is right.

“Yes. We should get rid of him. What were you thinking?”

“Tossing him in the sea?”

“If we do that the Twelve will still know you are alive. They will want confirmation that you are dead and,” she bends down to pick up Mikael’s gun that landed near his body and vaguely waves it at him, “he cannot do that anymore.”

Eve sits down on the bottom step, too tired to keep standing. "What if you just text from his phone, pretend to be him, and tell them I'm dead?"

"No. They will want something tangible. Something official. A report stating you are dead. So we cannot fake it. Someone will leak that you are alive."

"Wait. Why do I need to be dead at all? I should just call Carolyn and tell her where I am."

"They will send someone to kill you. If they want you dead nothing you or Carolyn or British Intelligence can do will stop them."

"So," says Eve, her eyes closed and forehead gently resting in her palm, "what should I do? Just disappear? Leave no trace?"

Villanelle gives her a thoughtful look before saying, "Maybe. First, we need to get rid of this bastard. Grab his feet."

Eve does as she's told while Villanelle grabs under his shoulders. Sixteen steps later Eve collapses to her knees, dropping Mikael. The weight of his body too much to bear in her condition as her adrenaline finally wears off. So Villanelle hoists his body up and fireman carries him the rest of the way outside with Eve walking alongside her as she tries to think of a way to free Eve.

At the shoreline, Eve watches Villanelle wade into the water, far enough for it to reach just below her shoulders. Villanelle plops Mikael in, gives him a good shove, and hopes the tide will do the rest. Swimming back to shore, she remembers the other body she and Mikael brought with them. She races back to Eve with a plan.

Eve watches Villanelle quickly swimming and then awkwardly bounding through the water towards her. A shiver runs down her back and sinks into the bottom of her stomach.

Meeting Eve on the shore, Villanelle's breathing is ragged from all the exertion.

In between pants, she gasps out, "I have an idea. We can fake your death. There is a body in the trunk of Mikael's car. We-I, you are not very helpful, will put it in the warehouse and we set it on fire. The damage done by the fire will buy you at least a week to disappear."

"Really? That will work?" asks Eve.

"Maybe. It is the best plan I can think of. We don't have much time till someone starts to wonder what happened to you."

"You know, if you wanted to disappear too, this will also buy you some time. The Twelve won't know if it was me or you in the fire."

Villanelle makes a noncommittal grunt walking past Eve towards Mikael's car. She lugs the guard's body into the warehouse through the door held open by Eve who's determined to help however she can. Eve gathers some papers from the upstairs office to use as kindling for the fire while Villanelle ties the dead guard to one of the chairs on the first floor. Once Eve's body double is in place, Villanelle uses the lighter from Mikael's car she noticed earlier to start the fire. She and Eve wait around long enough to be sure it's going to catch.

As a tendril of smoke snakes through a crack in the roof, Eve remarks to Villanelle, “So the Twelve are going to be after you now. They’re going to figure out all of this was you.”

Villanelle watches the leaking smoke turn darker and thicker before answering. “It’s probably best if we split up, that way they can’t find us both. They have a tracker on my phone so, I’m going to ditch it on a freight ship, throw them off for a while.”

What Villanelle says is partially true. Separating will make it harder for the Twelve to find them, but she also can’t be around Eve right now. It’s too much. Wanting someone who doesn’t want you. It drives her crazy in a way that makes her want to kill Eve just be done with it.

“Oh, um. You might want to try a plane instead. Cyryl Laine owns almost all the shipping business in Europe so a plane might be safer.”

“Thanks. What about you?”

“I was actually thinking that once you lose your trail, we could meet up and work together to maybe-eventually bring them down? So we could be free again?”

“We?” thinks Villanelle remembering Moscow. She had Irina at gunpoint and Eve had asked her to come with her then too. She had wanted to, but couldn’t. Now though, the only thing holding her back is whether she believes Eve won’t metaphorically stab her in the back, like she had literally done in Paris, and lock her up in prison.

“Where and when?” Villanelle could still change her mind or could finish this once and for all.

A smile fights its way through Eve’s shock. “Paris. In a week. On the Pont de Bir-Hakeim.”

The corrugated steel lining the outside of the building starts to turn a gentle red. The smoke is a rich deep purple. The air surrounding them turns hot and dry. Eve and Villanelle share a look knowing it's time to leave. They walk to Mikael's Volvo in silence and drive away without looking back.

"Where are we going?" asks Eve from the passenger seat.

"I am taking you to the train station."

"And where are you going?"

"I don't know yet."

Eve notices that Villanelle won't look at her. She's barely met Eve's eyes since shooting Mikael. Their drive continues in silence. Eve occasionally giving Villanelle searching looks. Villanelle pointedly ignoring her.

At the station, Eve gets out looking a little disheveled. She tried her best to clean herself up, wiping off the blood caked to the side of her face and wearing a large jacket she had found in the back of Mikael's car to hide her blood stained her clothes.

"So I'll see you in a week?"

Villanelle stares straight ahead but nods her head slightly. Eve turns to walk inside and buy her ticket hoping Villanelle will meet her.

Villanelle is suddenly lonely at the loss of Eve even though she knows Eve will be waiting for her in Paris and that its possibly a trap.

She takes one last look at the train station before putting the car in drive.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

PARIS – FIVE DAYS LATER

 

“Why not just kill me then? In the warehouse?” asks Eve.

Villanelle stares at her, face contorts to rage and confusion and sadness. The intensity of these emotions is new for Villanelle. The only time she feels this much or this deeply is right before and after a kill.

Eve presses ever so slightly into the edge of the knife. Villanelle fights off the urge to back down, her brow creasing and nose flaring at Eve’s move. Eve searches Villanelle's face. This close to her, Eve can see it so clearly in Villanelle’s eyes, the damage she has done. She understands that she does mean something to Villanelle but Villanelle doesn’t trust her. Would rather kill her than lose her.

“Ah, you were going to, but you changed your mind. Why?”

Villanelle gulps, but keeps the knife pressed to Eve. “You asked me if I was sure I wanted to kill you, but…”

“But what? You don’t trust me? You think I was using you then, in the warehouse? You think I’m using you know?” Narrowing her eyes and tilting her head to the side causing the knife to shave some skin off. A line of blood runs down her neck. Eve doesn’t notice. Villanelle does. She watches it drip down into Eve’s shirt.

“You weren’t even sure if I’d show up tonight. If I'd show up alone or if it would be an ambush to arrest you. You love me but you’re afraid of it. Afraid of how I’ll use it. Afraid of me not loving you.”

Eve's accusation cuts deeply. Villanelle's knife cuts Eve a little bit deeper too as her truth is spoken out loud by the only person who could truly hurt her.

Eve continues, seeing something besides pain in Villanelle face, "It was so frustrating and so easy. I didn’t even notice it. I thought I wanted to find you to-to-I don't know, to meet you or something. Find out what makes you tick.”

“But it's-" Eve starts pouring her heart out, "I see you. I see all of you. I know what you are, who you are Oksana. What you’re capable of and it doesn’t scare me. It doesn’t. I’m not lying to you. I’m not using you. And I’m not going anywhere. That darkness you have in you, I have it in me too. It took a while for me to recognize and understand it, but I do now. I finally see me, all of me. I’m not running from it anymore. I’m only running to run you. Always have been, even though I might not have realized it. Always to you. Only to you. So, I’m sorry. I'm sorry I pulled the knife out. If we can’t be together then what’s the point of all of this?”

Swiftly, Eve grabs Villanelle’s knife and brings it down to her abdomen, the same place she had wounded Villanelle. Eve hadn't known the depth of the damage she had done and she hopes this might make amends. Eve looks into Villanelle’s eye’s, sees a hot hatred, and watches Villanelle clench her jaw as Eve silently tells Villanelle she’s sorry again. Eve presses forward into the knife and Villanelle looks down as it cuts through the fabric of Eve’s jacket. It takes a second but Villanelle drops the knife, meeting Eve’s eyes. They hear the knife clatter on the cobbled plaza and Oksana kisses her. Deeply, as if she’s been waiting her whole life for someone to love her as she is, all of her, especially the darkest parts.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

A MONTH LATER

 

Elena runs into the office waving a newspaper.

“Have you seen it?!” she gaps out of breath as if she ran all the way from the newsstand to the pub.

Carolyn and Kenny look at her like she’s gone mad.

“I have seen many things,” deadpans Carolyn.

Elena ignores her and walks so quickly over to them in the far corner it’s as if she’s gliding and gruffly asks if the DNA test on the bone had come back yet.

“No. You know it hasn’t. You called them yesterday and the day before and the day before that and every day for a month. And every time they tell you it’s stuck in the backlog,” Kenny reminds her.

Carolyn had made an executive decision in Helsinki to run the DNA test as a Jane Doe to avoid any unwanted attention. Both Elena and Kenny had been pissed about it at the time, but the waiting had made holding onto the hope that it wasn’t Eve’s bone slightly easier.

Elena throws the newspaper she was waving on the table for them to read.

‘Billionaire Finnish Shipping Tycoon, Cyryl Laine, Arrested for Murder’

“Apparently a German newspaper, the same one that received the anonymous Panama Papers leak, got a whole mess of documents detailing all of Laine’s wrongdoings including the murders linked to his son, who is still missing. They passed it on to German Intelligence, but wrote up the story and were waiting to publish it the day they arrested him. The Finns, Germans, and Americans are charging him with multiple counts of conspiracy to commit murder, manslaughter, and murder. Finnish investigators are also charging him with tax evasion, tax fraud, and bring some anti-trust laws against him.” Elena is out of breath relaying all the details to them.

“So-“ begins Kenny.

Elena cuts him off and exclaims, “She’s alive! Eve’s alive! Aside from us, she’s the only one who had access to all this kind of information! It has to be her! It has to be!”

She and Kenny both look to Carolyn for some kind of assurance. Carolyn, for her part, has been sitting calmly through everything Elena just revealed.

“You knew, didn’t you? You knew the bone wasn’t Eve’s!” Elena says accusingly to Carolyn.

Carolyn simply states, “I had my suspicions, but I didn’t want to get your hopes up.”

“Well, next time get my hopes up!” and Elena collapses into an empty chair at the table, overcome with joy and relief that her friend is alive.

“Wait? If she’s not here, where is she? Why did she fake her death? What is she doing?” asks Elena suddenly feeling the loss of Eve again.

“I imagine,” speculates Carolyn, “that because the Twelve are after her, pretending to be dead is much safer.”

“Yeah,” muses Elena. She’s silent thinking about where Eve could be and Carolyn lets her think.

SMACK

“Hey! What was that for?” Kenny rubs his arm where Elena had slapped him.

“Your awfully quiet over there after just learning your friend who you thought had died in a horrible fire is actually alive and hiding from a secret criminal organization because they tried to kill her.”

Kenny ignores her and asks, “How much of the article did you actually read?”

“I mean, enough. I read some, got excited, and ran here. Why?”

“Well it says investigators are also investigating one of Laine's few living business partners. A Russian Mining executive based in Hungary.”

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

BUDAPEST

 

Outside of a café on the corner of the Budapest Stock Exchange, Villanelle is seated, intently focused on one of the windows on the corner of the building watching a man pace back and forth, shouting angrily into his phone. The morning sun is warm on her back. It is going to be a nice day.

In fact, recently, every day had been a nice day and it didn’t have anything to do with the pleasant weather. She feels happy, really happy for the first time. It was actually unsettling the first time she realized what she was feeling. She’s never felt genuinely happy before. A sense of accomplishment or pride at a job that had gone well or pleasure during a kill, but never happiness. She’s hadn’t known something so simple could feel like such a luxury. 

“What did I miss?” asks Eve, arriving at their table with two cups of coffee setting one of the cups in front of Villanelle.

Villanelle glances at the scar Eve gave to herself, the sheen of new skin flashing in the morning sun. Without taking her eyes off of Eve she replies, “Nothing. He is still angry. Shouting into his phone.”

They’re both disguised as old women, curly white wigs and fake tinted coke bottle glasses. Villanelle even has a cane with a knife hidden in the handle.

“So he obviously knows. Do you think he’s talking to another member of the Twelve?”

“Hmm, maybe.” Villanelle takes a sip of her coffee.

The two of them sit side by side watching the Russian Mining executive arguing into the phone.

“How long before the other members send a cleaning team for him?” wonders Eve.

“Not long. We should make our move soon. Before they do.”

But they’re not in a hurry. They have all day before they plan on sneaking into his office to clone everything from his computer and then break into his house to do the same before interrogating him and maybe killing him.

They take their time, sitting in the sun, drinking coffee, enjoying each other. 


End file.
